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CT AND FABLE 

IN 

PSYCHOLOGY 



BY JOSEPH JASTROW 

PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 







BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

(Cl)E fiiberisibe pxt^^y Cambtibge 

1900 



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COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY JOSEPH JASTROW 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



i PREFACE 

.lOUP of problems that appears conspicuously in 
jesent volume, and in so far contributes to the 
ss of its title, has obtained a considerable interest 
:he part of the public at large. Such interest seems 
ne to take its clue from the activity of those who 
aid startling revelations on the basis of unusual 
jhic experiences, and who give promise of disclosing 
er worlds than the one with which common sense and 
oommon sensation acquaint us, rather than from the 
cautious and consistent results of serious and profes- 
sional students in study or in laboratory. The fascina- 
tion of the unusual over the popular mind is familiar 
and intelligible, and seems in no direction more pro- 
nounced than in matters psychological. So long as 
this interest is properly subordinated to a comprehen- 
sive and illuminating general view of the phenomena 
in question, it is not likely to be harmful and may 
prove to be helpful. But when the conception of the 
nature of our mental endowment and the interest in the 
understanding thereof are derived from the unusual, 
the abnormal, and the obscure, instead of from the nor- 
mal, law-abiding observations systematized and illumi- 
nated by long and successful research, there is danger 
that the interest will become unwholesome and the 
conception misleading. It is quite natural that the 



vi PREFACE 

plain man should be interested in the experiences of 
the world of mind which form an intrinsic part of his 
common humanity ; and it is equally natural that he 
should find attraction in less commonplace and seem- 
ingly anomalous mental phenomena. If thunderstorms 
were as rare as total eclipses of the sun, it is likely 
that they would attract equal attention, be looked upon 
as terrifying and portentous by superstitious human- 
ity, and be invested by tradition with mysterious sig- 
nificance, under the influence of the interest in the 
unusual. The existence of this interest is itself a dis- 
tinctive trait meriting a psychological interpretation, 
and one not likely to be overlooked. Its direction and 
regulation become the care of the several departments 
of science that deal with the respective subject-matters 
involved. And yet in a special way, as expressions of the 
popular esprit^ such interests claim the psychologist's 
attention as they do not claim the attention of repre- 
sentatives of other sciences. It may happen that the 
astronomer finds an interest in noting popular concep- 
tions in regard to comets and life on other planets 
and beliefs about meteors and eclipses, but such inter- 
est forms no essential part of his occupation. He 
knows very well that the intelligent layman who wishes 
to be informed on astronomical matters will turn with 
confidence and respect to the accounts of the solar sys- 
tem, which represent the result of generations of scien- 
tific research under the guidance of exceptional ability, 
and devotion. The psychologist is in a less fortunate 
position. His topic has neither that exclusive definite- 
ness of content nor that position of hereditary pres 
tige nor the general acknowledgment of its essentiall 



PREFACE vii 

technical character, which belong to astronomy. All 
men have their own psychological experiences and 
notions about mental phenomena, but opinions concern- 
ing astronomy are admitted to belong to those who 
have specially fitted themselves for such pursuits. 

There is thus a natural reason why it should be par- 
ticularly difficult in psychology to bring about a whole- 
some and right-minded and helpful interest on the part 
of the layman, — a difficulty further aggravated by the 
encouragement of well-meaning but logically defective 
publications claiming to substantiate by quasi-scientific 
methods the popular belief in the peculiar personal and 
mysterious significance of events. In the face of this 
situation, the professional psychologist cannot but take 
heed of the dangers which imperil the true appreciation 
of his labors and his purpose, on the part of the sym- 
pathetic layman. It is a matter of serious concern that 
the methods of genuine psychological study, that the 
conditions of advance in psychology, that the scope and 
nature of its problems should be properly understood. 
It is matter of importance that the dominant interest 
in psychology should centre about the normal use and 
development of functions with respect to which psy- 
chology bears a significant message for the regulation 
of life. The restoration of a more desirable and pro- 
gressive point of view requires some examination of 
the false and misleading conceptions and alleged data, 
which threaten to divert the sound and progressive in- 
terest from its proper channels. It is not to be ex- 
pected, when many who engage public attention speak 
in favor of the importance of the unknown and the 
.mystic in psychology, when the twilight phenomena of 



viii PREFACE 

mental life are dwelt upon — and professionally as well 
as by amateurs — to the neglect of the luminous day- 
light actualities, that the layman will always correctly 
distinguish between what is authentically scientific and 
in accordance with the advancing ideals of psychology, 
and what is but the embodiment of unfortunate tradi- 
tions, or the misguided effort of the dilettante, or the 
perverse fallacy of the prepossessed mystic. Fact and 
fable in psychology can only be separated by the logi- 
cal sifting of evidence, by the exercise of the preroga- 
tive of a scientific point of view substantiated and 
fortified by the lessons embodied in the history of ra- 
tional opinion. The cause of truth and the overthrow 
of error must sometimes be fought in drawn battle and 
with the clash of arms, but are more frequently served 
by the inauguration of an adherence to one side and the 
consequent desertion of the other. Both procedures 
may be made necessary by the current status of psycho- 
logical discussion. 

The present collection of essays is offered as a con- 
tribution towards the realization of a sounder interest 
in and a more intimate appreciation of certain pro- 
blems upon which psychology has an authoritative 
charge to make to the public jury. These essays take 
their stand distinctively upon one side of certain issues, 
and as determinately as the situation seems to warrant, 
antagonize contrary positions ; they aim to oppose cer- 
tain tendencies and to support others ; to show that 
the sound and profitable interest in mental life is in 
the usual and normal, and that the resolute pursuit of 
this interest necessarily results in bringing the appar- 
ently irregular phenomena of the mental world within 



PREFACE ix 

the field o£ illumination of the more familiar and the 
law-abiding. They further aim to illustrate that mis- 
conceptions in psychology, as in other realms, are as 
often the result of bad logic as of defective observation, 
and that both are apt to be called into being by in- 
herent mental prepossessions. Some of the essays are 
more especially occupied with an analysis of the defec- 
tive logic which lends plausibility to and induces cre- 
dence in certain beliefs ; others bring forward contri- 
butions to an understanding of phenomena about which 
misconception is likely to arise ; still others are pre- 
sented as psychological investigations which, it is be- 
lieved, command a somewhat general interest. The 
prominence of the discussion of unfortunate and mis- 
leading tendencies in psychological opinion should not 
be allowed to obscure the more intrinsically important 
problems which in the main are of a different, though 
possibly not of an unrelated character. I should be 
defeating one of the purposes of these essays if, by the 
discussion of mooted positions, I conveyed the notion 
that the problems thus presented were naturally the 
fundamental ones about which advance in psychology 
may be most promisingly centred. I deeply regret 
that the dispossession of fable requires more resolute 
and more elaborate exposition than the unfoldment of 
fact ; but such is part of the condition confronting the 
critical student of psychological opinion. I must de- 
pend upon the reader to make due allowances for this 
foreshortening of a portion of the composition, and so 
to bring away a truer impression of the whole than the 
apparent perspective suggests. 

It would not be proper to claim for this budget of 



X PREFACE 

psychological studies a pre-arranged unity of design or 
a serial unfoldment of argument. They represent the 
unity of interest of a worker in a special field, who has 
his favorite excursions and vistas, who at times ven- 
tures away from the beaten paths and as frequently 
returns along those already traversed, but with vary- 
ing purposes, and reaches the outlook from a different 
approach. There seems enough of singleness of pur- 
pose in the several presentations to warrant their inclu- 
sion in a single volume with a common name. There 
is enough also to make it pertinent to explain that the 
occasional repetitions of the same line of thought 
seemed less objectionable than frequent reference from 
one essay to another. 

All of the essays have been previously printed in the 
pages of various scientific and popular magazines ; and 
I have accordingly to acknowledge the courtesy of the 
several publishers, which makes possible their appear- 
ance in their present form. The essays have, however, 
been subjected to a critical revision, in the hope of 
increasing their acceptability in regard to form and ma- 
terial, and of giving them a setting appropriate to the 
interests of the present-day readers of psychological 
literature. Both in the selection of the essays from a 
larger group of published studies, and in their arrange- 
ment and elaboration, I have attempted to bear in mind 
the several current interests in questions of this type, 
and to direct these interests formatively along lines 
which seem to me fertile in promise and sterling in 
value. In the recasting thus made necessary it has 
come about (markedly in two cases. The Problems of 
Psychical Research and The Logic of Mental Tele- 



PREFACE * xi 

graphy) that some of the essays have been entirely re- 
written and bear only a generic resemblance to their 
former appearance. 

The several acknowledgments to be recorded are as 
follows : To the " Popular Science Monthly," for per- 
mission to reprint The Psychology of Deception (De- 
cember, 1888), The Psychology of Spiritualism (April, 
1889), A Study of Involuntary Movements (April and 
September, 1892), The Mind's Eye (January, 1899), 
The Modern Occult (September, 1900) ; to the " New 
Princeton Review," for The Dreams of the Blind 
(January, 1888) ; to " Harper's Monthly Magazine," 
for The Problems of Psychical Research (June, 1889) ; 
to " Scribner's Magazine," for The Logic of Mental 
Telegraphy (October, 1895) ; to the " Cosmopolitan," 
for Hypnotism and its Antecedents (February, 1896). 
The Natural History of Analogy was delivered as a 
vice-presidential address before the Section of Anthro- 
pology of the American Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science, and was printed in its Proceedings, 
vol. xl., 1891. The article, Mental Prepossession 
and Inertia, appeared in a college publication of the 
University of Wisconsin, the " Aegis " (April, 1897). 
I have also to acknowledge my indebtedness to Miss 
Helen Keller for her very interesting contribution to 
my presentation of the dreams of the blind. My most 
comprehensive obligation in the preparation of the vol- 
ume I have acknowledged upon the dedicatory page. 

JOSEPH JASTROW. 
I Madisok, Wisconsin, November, 1900. 



CONTENTS 



II. 
III. 
IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 



II. 



PAGE 
V 



47 



Preface 

The Modern Occult 

I. The nature of the occult . 
Historical aspect of the occult 
Theosophy .... 

Spiritualism .... 

Practical occult systems : Alchemy 
Astrology, Phrenology, etc. 
The occult in relation to medicine 
Christian Science 
Other forms of occult healing . 
Influences affecting belief in the occult 
The Problems of Psychical Research 

I. Science and its attitude toward borderland phe- 
nomena ....... 

The attitude of Psychical Research ; its relation 

to Psychology 50 

Types of interest in Psychical Research : the 
occult interest ; the psychological interest ; 
practical applications of "psychical" investiga- 
tions ; the explanatory interest ; the investiga- 
tive interest ; the anthropological interest 
The content of the problems of Psychical Re- 
search : hypnotism ; subconscious activities ; hal- 
lucinations ; telepathy ..... 
The tendencies of Psychical Research 
The Logic of Mental Telegraphy 

Introductory 

I. Factors of the Problem : unconscious mental pro- 
mental community; coincidences 



III. 



IV. 



V. 



56 



66 

75 

78 
79 



xiv CONTENTS 

II. The statistical nature of the inquiry; the applica- 
tion of theory to special cases .... 83 

III. Sources of error in the data . . . . 87 

IV. The source of coincidences in the subjective inter- 

est . . . 88 

Y. R^sumd 93 

VI. The value of the data ; coincidences; experimental 

evidence; assumption and logical hypothesis . 95 
VII. The legitimacy of the telepathic hypothesis . 99 

VIII. Logical interpretation of the evidence . . . 102 
The Psychology of Deception 

Introductory 106 

I. The interpretative factor in perception; its rela- 
tion to sense-deceptions ..... 106 
II. The role of the conjurer; the comprehension of 
conjuring tricks dependent upon a knowledge 
of technical detail; illustrations; conjuring de- 
ceptions as imitations of the conditions of real 
experience Ill 

III. The subjective factors in deception: suggestion, 

expectation, misdirection of the attention; the 
setting of a trick; illustrations . . .118 

IV. The subjective attitude and prepossession as a 

factor in deception; illustrated by the phe- 
nomena of Spiritualism; experimental proof of 
the influence of the belief -attitude ; extreme in- 
stances of prepossession .... 125 

Mental contagion 132 

R^sumd; the safeguards against deception . 134 
The Psychology of Spiritualism 

I. Origin of modern Spiritualism ; a survey of typical 
manifestations; report of the Seybert Commis- 
sion; report of other observers . . . 137 
II. The belief in Spiritualism psychologically inter- 
preted; the technical requisites for a judgment 
in the matter; the investigations of Messrs. 
Hodgson and Davey; the psychological factors 
contributory to deception .... 147 



CONTENTS XV 

III. The logical status of Spiritualism . . . 159 

IV. The source of the belief in spirit-agency; its an- 

thropological bearings; the appeal to unfortu- 
nate predispositions; the moral aversion to 

Spiritualism 166 

Hypnotism and its Antecedents 

Introductory 171 

I. The historical aspect of hypnotism; the point of 

view of modern hypnotism . . . . 172 
11. Healers of disease by mental methods ; their meth- 
ods; Greatrakes; Gassner .... 176 
ni. Mesmer; the beginnings of Animal Magnetism; 
Mesmer's career in Paris; the Commission of 
1784; decline of Mesmerism . . . 180 
IV. The system of Animal Magnetism; its practices; 

a critical view 189 

V. Puys^gur and the discovery of artificial somnam- 
bulism; the status of Puys^gur; Pdtetin and his 

contributions 193 

VI. The revival of Mesmerism; Abbd Faria; somnam- 
bulism in the hospitals of Paris; the report of 
the Commission of 1825; the report of the Com- 
mission of 1837 200 

VII. James Braid; his early observations; his enuncia- 
tion of the physiology of the hypnotic state; 
his connection with phrenology; his later views; 
his recognition of unconscious deception . 205 

VIII. The chaotic condition of hypnotism in the middle 
decades of the nineteenth century; hypnotism 
as an anaesthetic; scientific contributions . . 213 
IX. Extravagances of Mesmerism; Deleuze and his 
followers; "electro-biology;" Harriet Marti- 
neau's letters on Mesmerism; Mesmeric mira- 
cles; Reichenbach and the " odic " force . 216 
X. Transition to modern hypnotism ; the scientific re- 
cognition of hypnotism; Charcot and his follow- 
ers; Bernheim and the school of Nancy . . 227 



xvi CONTENTS 

XI. Principles illustrated by the history of hypno- 
tism; lack of proper conceptions; unconscious 

suggestion; conclusion 231 

The Natural History of Analogy 

I. The logical and psychological aspects of analogy . 236 
II. Analogy and primitive mental life; illustrations; 
sympathetic magic based upon analogy ; further 
illustrations * 238 

III. Analogy the basis of belief in the connection be- 

tween object and name; illustrations; similar 
relation between the object and its image, draw- 
ing, or shadow 243 

IV. Analogy and metaphor; vaguer forms of ana- 

logy . . 248 

V. Analogy in children . . . . . . 250 

VI. Analogy in superstitions and folk-lore customs; 
in dream-interpretation; in fortune-telling; in 
numbers; in folk-medicine .... 252 

VII. The doctrine of sympathies; of signatures; astro- 
logy; the role of analogy in these systems; their 

modern survivals 261 

VIII. Analogy as a phase in mental evolution; the trans- 
ition from superstition to science; the evolu- 
tion of the race and of the individual; analogy, 
the serious thought habit of primitive man, be- 
comes in civilization a source of amusement; 
conclusion ....... 269 

The Mind's Eye 

I. The nature of perception; its subjective and ob- 
jective factors 275 

II. Illustrations of the efPects of the subjective ac- 
tor 279 

III. Perception as modified by attention and by the 

mental concept; illustrations; equivocal draw- 
ings 282 

IV. The function of the mind's eye ... 294 



CONTENTS xvii 



296 



Mental Prepossession and Inertia 

I. The nature of prepossession; pedagogical illustra- 
tions 

II. Illustration derived from the experience of the 

Census Bureau 301 

III. Psychological interpretation .... 304 

A Study of Involuntary Movements 

I. Unconscious activities 307 

^11. Muscle-reading; method of recording involuntary- 
movements .... . . 308 

III. Illustrations and description of records of involun- 

tary movements ...... 312 

IV. Interpretation and analysis of records of involun- 

tary movements ...... 321 

V. Influence of the nature of the object of attention 

upon involuntary movements . . . 330 

VI. Other forms of involuntary indications; "involun- 
tary whispering;" the subconscious . . . 334: 
The Dreams of the Blind 

I. The role of vision in mental life . . . 337 
II. The retention of vision in dreams as dependent 
upon the age of the loss of sight; the " critical 
period;" the investigation of Heerman in 1838; 
the status as to " dream-vision " of the partially 
blind 340 

III. Corroborations of the above results by other evi- 

dence; the dreams of the blind-deaf; dreams of 
Laura Bridgman; Helen Keller's account of her 
dream-life; interpretations .... 345 

IV. Distinctions in dream-life of incidents experienced 

during the period of sight from those of the 
blindness period; the imagination of the blind; 
illustrations of their dreams .... 360 

V. R^sum^ 369 

Index 371 



FACT AND FABLE IN 
PSYCHOLOGY 



THE MODERN OCCULT 



If that imaginary individual so convenient for liter- 
ary illustration, a visitor from Mars, were to alight 
upon our planet at its present stage of development, 
and if his intellectual interests induced him to survey 
the range of terrestrial views of the nature of what is 
" in heaven above, or on the earth beneath, or in the 
waters under the earth," to appraise mundane opinion 
in regard to the perennial problems of mind and matter, 
of government and society, of life and death, our 
Martian observer might conceivably report that a 
limited portion of mankind were guided by beliefs 
representing the accumulated toil and studious devotion 
of generations, — the outcome of a slow and tortuous 
but progressive growth through error and superstition, 
and at the cost of persecution and bloodshed ; that 
they maintained institutions of learning where the 
fruits of such thought could be imparted and the seeds 
cultivated to bear still more richly ; but that outside of 
this respectable yet influential minority, there were end- 
less upholders of utterly unlike notions and of widely 



2 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

diverging beliefs, clamoring like the builders of the 
tower of Babel in diverse tongues. 

It is well, at least occasionally, to remember that our 
conceptions of science and of truth, of the nature of 
logic and of evidence, are not so universally held as 
we unreflectingly assume or as we hopefully wish. 
Almost every one of the fundamental, basal, and in- 
disputable tenets of science is regarded as hopelessly 
in error by some ardent would-be reformer. One 
Hampden declares the earth to be a motionless plane 
with the North Pole as the centre ; one Carpenter 
gives a hundred remarkable reasons why the earth is 
not round, with a challenge to the scientists of America 
to disprove them ; one Symmes regarded the earth as 
hollow and habitable within, with openings at the poles, 
which he offered to explore for the consideration of 
the " patronage of this and the new worlds ; " while 
Symmes, Jr., explains how the interior is lighted, and 
that it probably forms the home of the lost tribes of 
Israel ; and one Teed announces, on equally conclusive 
evidence, that the earth is a " stationary concave cell 
. . . with people. Sun, Moon, Planets, and Stars on the 
inside," the whole constituting an " alchemico-organic 
structure, a Gigantic Electro-Magnetic Battery." If 
we were to pass from opinions regarding the shape of 
the earth to the many other and complex problems 
that appeal to human interests, it would be equally 
easy to collect " ideas " comparable to these in value, 
evidence, and eccentricity. With this conspicuously 
pathological outgrowth of brain-functioning, — although 
its representatives in the literature of the occult are 
neither few nor far between, — I shall not specifically 



THE MODERN OCCULT 3 

deal ; and yet the general abuse of logic, the helpless 
flounderings in the mire of delusive analogy, the base- 
less assumptions, which characterize insane or " crank " 
productions, are readily found in the literary products 
of occultism. 

The occult consists of a mixed aggregate of move- 
ments and doctrines, which may be the expressions of 
kindred interests and dispositions, but present no essen- 
tial community of content. Such members of this 
cluster of beliefs as in our day and generation have 
attained a considerable adherence or still retain it 
from former generations, constitute the modern occult. 
A conspicuous and truly distinctive characteristic of 
the occult is its marked divergence in trend and belief 
from the recognized standards and achievements of 
human thought. This divergence is one of attitude 
and logic and general perspective. It is a divergence 
of intellectual temperament, that distorts the normal 
reactions to science and evidence, and to the general 
significance and values of the factors of our complicated 
natures and of our equally complicated environment. At 
least it is this in extreme and pronounced forms ; and 
shades from it through an irregular variety of tints to 
a vague and often unconscious susceptibility for the 
unusual and eccentric, combined with an instability of 
conviction regarding established beliefs that is more 
often the expression of the weakness of ignorance than 
of the courage of independence. 

In their temper and course of unfoldment, occult doc- 
trines are likely to involve and to proceed upon mysti- 
cism, obscurity, and a disguised form of superstition. 
In their content, they are attracted to such themes as 



4 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

the ultimate nature of mental action, the conception 
of life and death, the effect of cosmic conditions upon 
human events and endowment, the delineation of charac- 
ter, the nature and treatment of disease ; or indeed to any 
of the larger or smaller realms of knowledge that com- 
bine with a strong human, and at times a practical in- 
terest, a considerable complexity of basal principles and 
general relations. Both the temper and the content, the 
manner and the matter of the occult, should be borne 
in mind in a survey of its more distinctive examples. It 
is well, while observing the particular form of occultism 
or mysticism, or, it may be, merely of superstition and 
error, which one or another of the occult movements 
exhibits, to note as well the importance of the intel- 
lectual motive or temperament that inclines to the 
occult. It is important to inquire not only what is 
believed, but what is the nature of the evidence that 
induces belief ; to observe what attracts and then 
makes converts ; to discover what are the influences 
by which the belief spreads. Two classes of motives 
or interests are conspicuous : the one prominently intel- 
lectual or theoretical, the other moderately or grossly 
practical. Movements in which the former interest 
dominates, contain elements that command respect even 
when they do not engage sympathy ; and that appeal, 
though it may be unwisely, to worthy impulses and 
lofty aspirations. Amongst the movements presenting 
prominent practical aspects are to be found instances 
of the most irreverent and pernicious, as well as of the 
most vulgar, ignorant, and fraudulent schemes which 
have been devised to mislead the human mind. Most 
occult movements, however, are of a mixed character ; 



THE MODERN OCCULT 5 

and in tlieir career, the speculative and the practical 
change in importance at different times, or in different 
lands, or at the hands of variously minded leaders. 
Few escape, and some seem especially designed for the 
partisanship of that class who are seeking whom they 
may devour ; who, stimulated by the greed for gain or 
the love of notoriety, set their snares for the eternally 
gullible. The interest in the occult, however, is under 
the sway of the law of fashion ; and fortunately, many 
a mental garment which is donned in spite of the pro- 
test of reason and propriety, is quietly laid aside when 
the dictum of the hour pronounces it unbecoming. 

II 

Historically considered, the occult points back to 
distant epochs and to foreign civilizations ; to ages when 
the facts of nature were but weakly grasped, when 
belief was largely dominated by the authority of tra- 
dition, when even the ablest minds fostered or assented 
to superstition, when the social conditions of life were 
inimical to independent thought, and the mass of men 
were cut off from intellectual growth of even the most 
elementary kind. Pseudo-science flourished in the ab- 
sence of true knowledge ; and imaginative speculation 
and unfounded belief held the office intended for 
inductive reason. Ignorance inevitably led to error, 
and false views to false practices. In the sympathetic 
environment thus developed, the occultist flourished 
and displayed the impressive insignia of exclusive wis- 
dom. His attitude was that of one seeking to solve an 
enigma, to find the key to a secret arcanum; his search 
was for some mystic charm, some talismanic formula, 



6 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

some magical procedure, which should dispel the mist 
that hides the face of nature and expose her secrets to 
his ecstatic gaze. By one all-encompassing, masterful 
effort the correct solution was to be discovered or re- 
vealed ; and at once and for all, ignorance was to give 
place to true knowledge, science and nature were to be 
as an open book, doubt and despair to be replaced by 
the serenity of perfect wisdom. As our ordinary senses 
and faculties proved insufficient to accomplish such ends, 
supernatural powers were appealed to, a transcendental 
sphere of spiritual activity was cultivated, capable of 
perceiving, through the hidden symbolism of apparent 
phenomena, the underlying relations of cosmic struc- 
ture and final purposes. Long periods of training and 
devotion, seclusion from the world, contemplation of 
inner mysteries, were to lead the initiate through the 
various stages of adeptship up to the final plane of com- 
munion with the infinite and the comprehension of truth 
in all things. This form of occultism reaches its full- 
est and purest expression in Oriental wisdom-religions. 
These vie in interest to the historian with the mythology 
and philosophy of Greece and Rome ; and we of the 
Occident feel free to profit by their ethical and philo- 
sophical content, and to cherish the impulses which 
gave them life. But when such views are forcibly 
transplanted to our age and clime, when they are 
decked in garments so unlike their original vestments, 
particularly when they are associated with dubious 
practices and come into violent conflict with the truth 
that has accumulated since they first had birth, — their 
aspect is profoundly altered, and they come within the 
circle of the modern occult. 



THE MODERN OCCULT 



III 



Of this character is Theosophy, an occult movement 
brought into recent prominence by the activity and 
personality of Mme. Blavatsky. The story of the 
checkered career of this remarkable woman is fairly 
accessible. Born in Russia in 1831 as Helen Petrovna, 
daughter of Colonel Hahn, of the Russian army, she 
was married at the age of seventeen to an elderly gen- 
tleman, M. Blavatsky. She is described in girlhood 
as a person of passionate temper and wilful and erratic 
disposition. She separated or escaped from her hus- 
band after a few months of married life, and entered 
upon an extended period of travel and adventure. 
The search for " psychic " experiences and for unusual 
persons and beliefs seemed to form the leit-motiv 
of her nomadic existence. She absorbed Hindu wis- 
dom from the adepts of India ; she sat at the feet of 
a thaumaturgist at Cairo ; she journeyed to Canada 
to meet the medicine man of the Red Indians, and to 
New Orleans to observe the practices of Voodoo among 
the negroes. It is difficult to know what to believe 
in the accounts prepared by her enthusiastic followers. 
Violations of physical law were constantly occurring in 
her presence ; and, to borrow a phrase from Mr. Lang, 
" sporadic outbreaks of rappings and feats of impul- 
sive pots, pans, beds, and chairs insisted on making 
themselves notorious." In 1873 she came to New York 
and sat in " spiritualistic " circles, assuming an assent 
to their theories, but claiming to see through and beyond 
the manifestations the operations of her theosophic 
guides in astral projection. At such a seance she met 



8 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

Colonel Olcott, and assisted him in the foundation 
of the Theosophical Society in New York in October, 
1875. Mme. Blavatsky directed the thought of this 
society to the doctrines of Indian occultism, and re- 
ported the appearance in New York of a Hindu Ma- 
hatma, who left a turban behind him as evidence of 
his astral visit. The Mahatmas, it was explained, 
were a Society of Brothers, who dwelt in the fastnesses 
of far-ofp Thibet, and there handed on by tradition the 
super-mortal wisdom which their spirituality and con- 
templative training enabled them to absorb. Later, 
this modern priestess of Isis and Colonel Olcott (who 
remained her staunch supporter, but whom she referred 
to in private as a " psychologized baby ") exchanged 
the distracting atmosphere of New York for the more 
serene environment of India ; and at Adyar established 
a shrine, from which were mysteriously issued answers 
to letters placed within its recesses, from which secret 
facts were revealed, and a variety of interesting mar- 
vels performed. Discords arose within the household, 
and led to the publication by M. and Mme. Cou- 
lomb, her confederates, of letters illuminating the tricks 
of the trade by which the miracles had been produced. 
Mme. Blavatsky pronounced the letters to be forgeries, 
but they were sufficiently momentous to bring Mr. 
Hodgson to India to investigate for the Society for 
Psychical Research. He was able to deprive many of 
the miracles of their mystery; to show how the shrine 
from which the Mahatma's messages emanated was 
accessible to Mme. Blavatsky by the aid of sliding 
panels and secret drawers, to show that these messages 
were in style, spelling, and handwriting the counterpart 



THE MODERN OCCULT 9 

of Mme. Blavatsky's, to show that many of the phe- 
nomena were the result of planned collusion and that 
others were created by the limitless credulity and the 
imaginative exaggeration of the witnesses, — " domes- 
tic imbeciles," as madame confidentially referred to 
them. Through the Akasic force, the medium of which 
was the mysterious world-ether, Akaz, were brought 
messages that suddenly appeared in space or fluttered 
down from the ceiling ; yet M. Coulomb explained how 
by means of a piece of thread, a convenient recess in 
the plaster of the ceiling, and an arranged signal, the 
letters could be made to appear at the proper dramatic 
moment. When a saucer was left standing near the 
edge of a shelf in the shrine, and the opening of the 
door brought it to the floor shattered to pieces, the 
same mysterious force was sufficient to recreate it, 
without flaw or blemish ; but when Mr. Hodgson finds 
that at a shop at which Mme. Blavatsky had made 
purchases, two such articles had been sold at the price 
of two rupees eight annas the pair, the miracle becomes 
more intelligible. 

In brief, the report of the society convicted " the 
Priestess of Isis " of "a long continued combination 
with other persons to produce by ordinary means a 
series of apparent marvels for the support of the 
Theosophic movement ; " and concludes with these 
words : " For our own part, we regard her neither 
as the mouthpiece of hidden seers nor as a mere vul- 
gar adventuress ; we think that she has achieved a 
title to permanent remembrance as one of the most 
accomplished, ingenious, and interesting impostors in 
history." Mme. Blavatsky died in 1891, and her 



10 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

ashes were divided between Adyar, London, and New 
York. 

The Theosophic movement continues, though with 
abated vigor, owing partly to the above-mentioned dis- 
closures, but probably more to the increasing pro- 
pagandism of other cults, to the lack of a leader of 
Mme. Blavatsky's genius, or to the inevitable ebb and 
flow of such interests. Mme. Blavatsky continued to 
expound Theosophy after the exposures, and although 
depressed by their publication still occasionally essayed 
a miracle. Later, in a moment of confession induced 
by the discovery of a package of Chinese envelopes 
ready to serve for miraculous appearances, she is re- 
ported to have said, " What is one to do, when in order 
to rule men it is necessary to deceive them ; when their 
very stupidity invites trickery, for almost invariably 
the more simple, the more silly, and the more gross 
the phenomena, the more likely it is to succeed?" 
Still, even self-confession does not detract from the 
fervor of convinced believers ; and Mrs. Besant, Mr. 
Sinnett, and others were ready to take up the work at 
her death. However, miracles are no longer performed, 
and no immediately practical ends are proclaimed. In- 
dividual development and evolution, mystic discourses 
on adeptship and Karma and Maya and Nirvana, 
communion with the higher ends of life, the cultiva- 
tion of an esoteric psychic insight, form the goal of 
present endeavor. The Mahatmas, says Mrs. Besant, 
are giving " intellectual instructions, enormously more 
interesting than even the exhibition of their abnormal 
powers." " Our European thinkers," thus Mr. Pod- 
more interprets Mr. Sinnett's attitude, " are like blind 



THE MODERN OCCULT 11 

men who are painfully learning to read with their 
fingers from a child's primer, whilst these have eyes to 
see the universe, past, present, and to come. To Mr. 
Sinnett it had been given to learn the alphabet of that 
transcendent language." " He could make the most 
extravagant mysticism seem matter of fact. He could 
write of Manvantaras and Nirvana, and the septen- 
ary constitution of man, in language which would have 
been appropriate in a treatise on kitchen-middens, or 
the functions of the pineal gland. In his lucid prose 
the vast conceptions of primitive Buddhism were fused 
with the commonplaces of modern science ; and whilst 
the cosmology which resulted JFrom their union dazzled 
by its splendid visions, the precise terminology of the 
writer, and the very poverty of his imagination, served 
to reassure his readers that they were listening to words 
of truth and soberness. We were taught to look back 
upon this earth and all its mighty sisterhood of planets 
and suns rolling onward in infinite space, through cycle 
after cycle in the past. We were shown how, through 
the perpetual flux and reflux of the spiritual and the 
natural, the cosmic evolution was accomplished, and the 
earth grew, through the life of crystal, and plant, and 
brute, to man. We saw how the worlds throbbed in 
vast alternation of systole and diastole, and how the 
tide of human life itself had its ebb and flow. And 
this fugitive human personality — the man who works, 
and loves, and suffers — we saw to endure but for a 
short life on earth, and for an age, shorter or longer, in 
Devachan, Memory is then purged away, the eternal 
spirit puts on a new dress, and a new life on earth is 
begun. And so through each succeeding reincarnation 



12 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

the goal of tlie life preceding becomes the starting- 
point of the life which follows." In such manner the 
modern Theosophist seeks to appeal to men and women 
of philosophical inclinations, for whom an element of 
mysticism has its charm, and who are intellectually at 
unrest with the conceptions underlying modern science 
and modern life. Such persons are quite likely to be 
educated, refined, and sincere. We may believe them 
intellectually misguided ; we may recognize the fraud 
to which their leader resorted to glorify her creed, but 
we must equally recognize the absence of many perni- 
cious tendencies in their teachings, which characterize 
other and more practical occult movements. 

IV 

Spiritualism, another member of the modern occult 
family, presents a combination of features rather diffi- 
cult to portray ; but its public career of half a century 
has probably rendered its tenets and practices fairly 
familiar.^ For, like other movements, it presents both 
doctrines and manifestations ; and, like other move- 
ments, it achieved its popularity through its manifesta- 
tions and emphasized the doctrines to maintain the 
interest and solidarity of its numerous converts. De- 
liberate fraud has been repeatedly demonstrated in a 
large number of alleged " spiritualistic " manifestations ; 
in many more the very nature of the phenomena and 

1 Spiritualism is here considered only in its g-eneral bearings upon 
modern conceptions of the occult ; any consideration of the special 
phenomena presented under its auspices or of the influences which con- 
tribute to a belief in its tenets would lead too far afield. The topic 
is separately considered from a different point of view in a later essay. 



THE MODERN OCCULT 13 

of the conditions under which they appear is so 
strongly suggestive of trickery as to render any other 
hypothesis of their origin equally improbable and 
superfluous. Unconscious deception, exaggerated and 
distorted reports, defective and misleading observation, 
have been demonstrated to be most potent reagents, 
whereby alleged miracles are made to throw off their 
mystifying envelopings and to leave a simple deposit 
of intelligible and often commonplace fact. That the 
methods of this or that medium have not been brought 
within the range of such explanation may be admitted, 
but the admission carries with it no bias in favor of 
the spiritualistic hypothesis. It may be urged, how- 
ever, that where there is much smoke there is apt to 
be some fire ; yet there is little prospect of discovering 
the nature of the fire until the smoke has been com- 
pletely cleared away. Perhaps it has been snatched 
from heaven by a materialized Prometheus ; perhaps 
it may prove to be the trick of a ridiculus mus gnaw- 
ing at a match. And yet, in this connection, the main 
point to be insisted upon with regard to such manifes- 
tations is that their interpretation and their explana- 
tion demand some measure of technical knowledge 
and training, and of special adaptability to such pur- 
suits. " The problem cannot be solved and settled by 
amateurs, nor by ' common sense ' that 

' Delivers brawling judgments all day long, 
On all things unashamed,' " 

Spiritualism represents a system atization of popular 
beliefs and superstitions, modified by echoes of reli- 
gious and philosophical doctrines; it thus contains 
factors which owe their origin to other interests than 



14 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

those whicli lead directly to the occult. Its main pur- 
pose was to establish the reality of communication with 
departed spirits ; the means, which at first spontane- 
ously presented themselves and later were devised for 
this purpose, were in large measure not original. The 
rappings are in accord with the traditional folk-lore 
behavior of ghosts ; their transformation into a signal 
code (although a device discovered before) may have 
been due to the originality of the Fox children ; the 
planchette has its analogies in Chinese and European 
modes of divination ; clairvoyance was incorporated 
from the phenomena of artifical somnambulism, as 
practiced by the successors of Mesmer ; the " sensitive " 
or " medium " suggests the same origin as well as the 
popular belief in the gift of supernatural powers in 
favored individuals ; others of the phenomena, such as 
" levitation " and " cabinet performances," have their 
counterparts in Oriental magic ; " slate-writing," " form 
materializations," " spirit-messages " and " spirit photo- 
graphs " are, in the main, modern contributions. Mr. 
Lang has attractively set forth the resemblances be- 
tween primitive and ancient spiritualism and its mod- 
ern revival; he suggests that "the 'Trance Medium,' 
the ' Inspirational Speaker ' was a reproduction of the 
maiden with a spirit of divination, of the Delphic 
Pythia. In the old belief, the god dominated her, and 
spoke from her lips, just as the ' control ' or directing 
spirit dominates the medium. " He suggests that it is 
for like reasons that '' the Davenport Brothers, like 
Eskimo and Australian conjurers, like the Highland 
seer in the bull's hide," are swathed or bound ; he 
notes that " the lowest savages have their seances^ 



THE MODERN OCCULT 15 

levitatlons, bindings of the medium, trance speakers ; 
Peruvians, Indians, have their objects moved without 
contact ; " he surmises that the Fox children, being of 
a Methodist family, may have been inspired by " old 
Jeffrey," who haunted the Wesleys' house. 

The phenomena now associated with modern Spir- 
itualism, with their characteristic milieu^ breed the 
typical atmosphere of the seance chamber, which re- 
sists precise analysis, but which in its extreme form 
involves morbid credulity, blind prepossession, and 
emotional contagion ; while the dependence of the 
phenomena on the character of the medium offers 
strong temptation alike to shrewdness, eccentricity, and 
dishonesty. On the side of his teachings the Spiritual- 
ist is likewise not strikingly original. The relations of 
his beliefs to those that grew about the revelations 
of Swedenborg, to the speculations of the German 
" pneumatologists," and to other philosophical doc- 
trines, though perhaps not intimate, are yet traceable 
and interesting ; and in another view the Spiritualist 
is as old as man himself, and finds his antecedents 
in the necromancer of Chaldea, or in the Shaman of 
Siberia, or the Angekok of Greenland, or the spirit- 
doctor of various savage tribes. The modern mediums 
are thus simply repeating with new costumes and 
improved scenic effects the mystic drama of primitive 
man. 

Spiritualism thus appeals to a deep-seated craving in 
human nature, that of assurance of personal immortal- 
ity and of communion with the departed. Just so long 
as a portion of mankind will accept material evidence 
of such a belief, and will even countenance the irrever- 



16 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

ence, the triviality, and the vulgarity surrounding the 
manifestations ; just so long as those persons will mis- 
judge their own powers o£ detecting how the alleged 
supernatural appearances are really produced, and re- 
main unimpressed by the principles upon which alone 
a consistent explanation is possible, just so long will 
Spiritualism and'kindred delusions flourish. 

As to the present-day status of this cult it is not 
easy to speak positively. Its clientele has apparently 
greatly diminished ; it still numbers amongst its ad- 
herents men and women of culture and education, and 
many more who cannot be said to possess these quali- 
ties. There seems to be a considerable class of per- 
sons who believe that natural laws are insufficient to 
account for their personal experiences and those of 
others, and who temporarily or permanently incline to 
a spiritualistic hypothesis in preference to any other. 
Spiritualists of this intellectual temper can, however, 
form but a small portion of those who are enrolled 
under its creed. If one may judge by the tone and 
contents of current spiritualistic literature, the rank 
and file to which Spiritualism appeals present an un- 
intellectual occult company, credulously accepting what 
they wish to believe, utterly regardless of the intrinsic 
significance of evidence or hypothesis, vibrating from 
one extreme or absurdity to another, and blindly fol- 
lowing a blinder or more fanatic leader or a self-inter- 
ested charlatan. While for the most extravagant and 
unreasonable expressions of Spiritualism one would 
probably turn to the literature of a few decades ago, 
yet the symptoms presented by the Spiritualism of to- 
day are unmistakably of the same character, and form 



THE MODERN OCCULT 17 

a complex as characteristic as the symptom-complex of 
hysteria or epilepsy, and which, fmite de mieux, may 
be termed occult. It is a type of occultism of a par- 
ticularly pernicious character, because of its power to 
lead a parasitic life upon the established growths of 
religious beliefs and interests, and at the same time to 
administer to the needs of an unfortunate but widely 
prevalent passion for special signs and omens and the 
interpretation of personal experiences. It is a weak 
though comprehensible nature that becomes bewildered 
in the presence of a few experiences that seem home- 
less among the generous provisions of modern science, 
and runs off panic-stricken to find shelter in a sys- 
tem that satisfies a narrow personal craving at the sac- 
rifice of broadly established principles, nurtured and 
grown strong in the hardy and beneficent atmosphere 
of science. It is a weaker and an ignorant nature that 
is attracted to the cruder forms of such beliefs, be it 
by the impulsive yielding to emotional susceptibility, 
by the contagion of an unfortunate mental environ- 
ment, or by the absence of the steadying power of reli- 
gious faith, or of logical vigor, or of confidence in the 
knowledge of others. Spiritualism finds converts in 
both camps and assembles them under the flag of the 
occult.^ 

1 To prevent misunderstanding- it is "well to repeat that I am speak- 
ing of the general average of thorough-going Spiritualists. The fact 
that a few mediums have engaged the attention of scientifically minded 
investigators has no hearing on the motives which lead most persons to 
make a professional call on a medium, or to join a circle. The further 
fact that these investigators have at times found themselves baffled by 
the medium's performances and that a few of them have announced 
their readiness to accept the spiritualistic hypothesis, is of importance 



18 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

The wane in the popularity of Spiritualism may be 
due in part to frequent exposures, in part to the pass- 
ing of the occult interest to pastures new, and in part 
to other and less accessible causes. Such interest may 
again become dominant by the success or innovations 
of some original medium or by the appearance of some 
unforeseen circumstances. The present disposition to 
take up "spiritual healing" and " spiritual readings of 
the future " rather than mere assurances from the dead, 
indicates a desire to emulate the practical success of 
more recently established rivals. The history of Spir- 
itualism, by its importance and its extravagance of 
doctrine and practice, forms an essential and an in- 
structive chapter in the history of aberrant belief ; and 
there is no difficulty in tracing the imprints of its foot- 
steps on the sands of the occult. 



The impress of ancient and mediaeval lore upon 
latter-day occultism is conspicuous in the survivals of 
Alchemy and Astrology. Phrenology represents a 
more recent pseudo-science, but one sufficiently obsolete 
to be considered under the same head ; as may also 
Palmistry, which has relations both to an ancient form 
of divination and to a more modern development after 
the manner of Physiognomy. The common charac- 
teristic of these is their devotion to a practical end. 
Alchemy occupies a somewhat distinct position. The 
original alchemists sought the secret of converting the 

in some aspects, but does not determine tlie general trend of the spir- 
itualistic movement in the direction in which it is considered in the 
present discussion. 



THE MODERN OCCULT 19 

baser metals into gold, in itself a sufficiently alluring 
and human occupation. There is no reason why such 
a problem should assume an occult aspect, except the 
sufficient one that ordinary procedures have not proved 
capable to effect the desired end. It is a proverbial 
fault of ambitious inexperience to attack valiantly large 
problems with endless confidence and sweeping aspira- 
tion. It is well enough in shaping your ideas to hitch 
your wagon to a star, yet the temporary utility of 
horses need not be overlooked ; but shooting arrows at 
the stars is apt to prove an idle pastime. If we are 
willing to forget for the moment that the same develop- 
ment of logic and experiment that makes possible the 
mental and material equipment of the modern chemist, 
makes impossible his consideration of the alchemist's 
search, we may note how far the inherent constitution 
of the elements, to say nothing of their possible trans- 
mutation, has eluded his most ultimate analysis. How 
immeasurably further it was removed from the grasp 
of the alchemist can hardly be expressed. But this is 
a scientific and not an occult view of the matter ; it 
was not by progressive training in marksmanship that 
the occultist hoped to send his arrows to the stars. His 
was a mystic search for the magical transmutation, the 
elixir of life or the philosopher's stone. One might 
suppose that, once the world has agreed that these ends 
are past finding out, the alchemist, like the maker of 
stone arrow-heads, would have found his occupation 
gone and have left no successor. His modern repre- 
sentative, however, is an interesting and by no means 
extinct species. He seems to flourish in France, but 
may be found in Germany, in England, and in this 



20 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

country. He is rarely a pure alchemist (although so 
recently as 1854 one of them offered to manufacture 
gold for the French mint), but represents the pure type 
of occultist. He calls himself a Rosicrucian ; he estab- 
lishes a University of the Higher Studies, and becomes 
a professor of Hermetic Philosophy. His thought is 
mystic, and symbolism has an endless fascination for 
him. The recondite significance of numbers, extrava- 
gant analogies of correspondence, the traditional hidden 
meanings of the Kabbalah, fairly intoxicate him ; and 
verbose accounts of momentous relations and of unin- 
telligible discoveries run riot in his writings. His sci- 
ence is not a mere Chemistry, but a Hyper-Chemistry ; 
his transmutations are no longer material, but assume a 
spiritual aspect. Like all adept followers of an esoteric 
belief, he must stand apart from his fellow-men ; he 
must cultivate the higher " psychic " powers, so that 
eventually he may be able by the mere action of his 
will to cause the atoms to group themselves into gold. 
The modern alchemist is apt to be a general occultist ; 
he may be also an astrologer or a magnetist or a theo- 
sophist. But he is foremost an ardent enthusiast for 
exclusive and unusual lore — not the common and 
superficial possessions of misguided democratic science. 
He goes through the forms of study, remains superior 
to the baser practical ends of life, and finds his reward 
in the self-satisfaction of exclusive wisdom. In Paris, 
at least, he forms part of a rather respectable salon, 
speaking socially, or a " company of educated charla- 
tans," speaking scientifically. His class does not con- 
stitute a large proportion of modern occultists, but they 
present a prominent form of its intellectual tempera- 



THE MODERN OCCULT 21 

merit. " There are also people," says Mr. Lang, " who 
so dislike our detention in the prison-house of old un- 
varying laws that their bias is in favor of anything 
which may tend to prove that science in her contem- 
porary mood is not infallible. As the Frenchman did 
not care what sort of a scheme he invested money in, 
provided that it annoys the English, so many persons 
do not care what they invest belief in, provided that it 
irritates men of science." Of such is the kingdom of 
alchemists and their brethren. 

VI 

Astrology, Phrenology, Physiognomy, and Palmistry 
have in common a search for positive knowledge 
whereby to regulate the affairs of life, to foretell the 
future, to comprehend one's destiny and capabilities. 
They aim to secure success, or at least to be forearmed 
against failure by being forewarned. This is a natural, 
a practical, and in no essential way an occult desire. 
It becomes occult, or, more accurately, superstitious, 
when it is satisfied by appeals to relations and influ- 
ences which do not exist, and by false interpretation of 
what may be admitted as measurably and vaguely true 
and about equally important. When not engaged in 
their usual occupation of building most startling super- 
structures on the most insecure foundations, practical 
occultists are like Dr. Holmes's katydid, " saying an un- 
disputed thing in such a solemn way." They will not 
hearken to the experience of the ages that success can- 
not be secured nor character read by discovering their 
unreal or mystic stigmata ; they will not learn from 
physiology and psychology that the mental capabilities, 



22 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

the moral and emotional endowment of an individual 
are not stamped on his body in such a way that they 
may be revealed by half an hour's use of the calipers 
and tape-measure ; they will not listen when science 
and common sense unite in teaching that the knowledge 
of mental powers is not such as may be applied by rule 
of thumb to individual cases, but that, like much other 
valuable knowledge, it proceeds by the exercise of 
sound judgment, and must as a rule rest content with 
suggestive generalizations and imperfectly established 
correlations. An educated man with wholesome inter- 
ests and a vigorous logical sense can consider a possible 
science of character and the means of aiding its ad- 
vance without danger and with some profit. But this 
meat is sheer poison to those who are usually attracted 
to this type of speculations, while it offers to the un- 
scrupulous charlatan a most convenient net to spread 
for the unwary. In so far as these occult mariners, 
the astrologists and phrenologists et id genus omne^ 
are sincere, and in so far represent superstition rather 
than commercial fraud, they simply ignore, through 
obstinacy or ignorance, the lighthouses and charts and 
the other aids to modern navigation, and persist in 
steering their craft by an occult compass. In some 
cases they are professedly setting out, not for any har- 
bor marked on terrestrial maps, but their expedition is 
for the golden fleece or for the apples of the Hesper- 
ides ; and with loud-voiced advertisements of their skill 
as pilots, they proceed to form stock companies for the 
promotion of their several enterprises and to dispose of 
the shares to credulous speculators. 

It would be a profitless task to review the alleged 



THE MODERN OCCULT 23 

data of Astrology or Phrenology or Palmistry, except 
for the illustrations which they readily yield of the na- 
ture of the conceptions and of the logic which command 
a certain popular interest and acceptance. The interest 
in these notions is, as Mr. Lang argues about ghosts 
and rappings and bogles, in how they come to be 
believed, rather than in how much or how little they 
chance to be true. It must be remembered also that 
our present interest is in the occult factors of these 
composite systems ; they each contain other factors, — 
in part incorporations of vague and distorted scientific 
truths, in part dogmatic overstatement of results of 
observation, which, if reduced to the proportions war- 
ranted by definite evidence, dissolve into insignificance 
or intangibility, in part plausible or specious argu- 
mentation, and in still greater part mere fanciful asser- 
tion. And if we proceed to examine the professed 
evidence for the facts and laws and principles (^sit 
venia verbis^ that pervade Astrology or Phrenology or 
Palmistry or dream-interpretation, or beliefs of that 
ilk, we find the flimsiest kind of texture, that will 
hardly bear examination, and holds together only so 
long as it is kept secluded from the light of day. Par- 
fetched analogy, baseless assertion, the uncritical as- 
similation of popular superstitions, a great deal of 
prophecy after the event (it is wonderful how clearly 
the astrologer finds the indications of Napoleon's career 
in his horoscope, or the phrenologist reads them in 
the Napoleonic cranial protuberances), much fanciful 
elaboration of detail, ringing the variations on a suffi- 
ciently complex and non-demonstrable proposition, cul- 
tivating a convenient vagueness of expression, together 



24 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

with an apologetic skill in providing for and explain- 
ing exceptions, the courage to ignore failure and the 
shrewdness to profit by coincidences and half-assimi- 
lated smatterings of science, and with it all an insen- 
sibility to the moral and intellectual demands of the 
logical decalogue, — and you have the skeleton, which, 
clothed with one flesh, becomes Astrology, and with an- 
other Phrenology, and with another Palmistry or Solar 
Biology or Descriptive Mentality or what not. Such 
pseudo-sciences thrive upon that widespread and in- 
tense craving for practical guidance of our individual 
affairs, which is not satisfied with judicious applica- 
tions of general principles, with due consideration of 
the probabilities and uncertainties of human life, but 
demands an impossible and precise revelation. Not 
all that passes for, and in a way is knowledge, is or is 
likely soon to become scientific ; and when a peasant 
parades in an academic gown the result is likely to be 
a caricature. 

VII 

To achieve fortune, to judge well and command 
one's fellow-men, to foretell and control the future, to 
be wise in worldly lore, are natural objects of human 
desire ; but still another is essential to happiness. 
Whether we attempt to procure these good fortunes 
by going early to bed and early to rise, or by more 
occult procedures, we wish to be healthy as well as 
wealthy and wise. The maintenance of health and the 
perpetuity of youth were not absent from the mediaeval 
occultist's search, and formed an essential part of the 
benefits to be conferred by the elixir of life and the 



THE MODERN OCCULT 25 

philosopher's stone. A series of superstitions and ex- 
travagant systems are consjjicuous in the antecedents 
and the by-paths of the history of medicine, and are 
related to it much as astrology is to astronomy, or 
alchemy to chemistry ; and because medicine in part 
remains and to previous generations was conspicuously 
an empirical art rather than a science, it offers great 
opportunity for practical error and misapplied partial 
knowledge. It is not necessary to go back to early 
civilizations or to primitive peoples, among whom the 
medicine-inan and the priest were one and alike ap- 
pealing to occult powers, nor to early theories of dis- 
ease which beheld in insanity tbe obsession of demons 
and resorted to exorcism to cast them out ; it is not 
necessary to consider the various personages who ac- 
quired notoriety as healers by laying on of hands or by 
appeal to faith, or who, like Mesmer, introduced the 
system of animal magnetism, or, like some of his fol- 
lowers, sought directions for healing from the clair- 
voyant dicta of somnambules ; it is not necessary to 
ransack folk-lore superstitions and popular remedies 
for the treatment of disease ; for the modern forms 
of " irregular " healing offer sufficient illustrations of 
occult methods of escaping the ills that flesh is heir to. 
The existence of a special term for a medical impos- 
tor is doubtless the result of the prevalence of the class 
thus named ; but quackery and occult medicine, though 
mutually overlapping, can by no means be held account- 
able for one another's failings. Many forms of quack- 
ery proceed on the basis of superstitions or fanciful or 
exaggerated notions containing occult elements, but for 
the present purpose it is wise to limit attention to those 



26 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

in which this occult factor is distinctive ; for medical 
quackery in its larger relations is neither modern nor 
occult. Occult healing takes its distinctive character 
from the theory underlying the practice rather than 
from the nature of the practice. It is not so much what 
is done, as why it is done, or pretended to be done or not 
done, that determines its occult character. A factor 
of prominence in modern occult healing is indeed one 
that in other forms characterized many of its predeces- 
sors, and was rarely wholly absent from the connection 
between the procedure and the result ; this is the 
mental factor, which may be called upon to give char- 
acter to a theory of disease, or be utilized consciously 
or unconsciously as a curative principle. It is not 
implied that " mental medicine " is necessarily and in- 
trinsically occult, but only that the general trend of 
modern occult notions regarding disease may be best 
portrayed in certain typical forms of " psychic " healing. 
The legitimate recognition of the importance of mental 
conditions in health and disease is one of the results of 
the union of modern psychology and modern medicine. 
An exaggerated and extravagant as well as pretentious 
and illogical overstatement and misstatement of this 
principle may properly be considered as occult. 

VIII 

Among such systems there is one which by its mo- 
mentary prominence overshadows all others; and for 
this reason, as well as for its more explicit or rather 
more extended statement of principles, must be ac- 
corded special attention : I need hardly say that I refer 
to that egregious misnomer, Christian Science. This 



THE MODERN OCCULT 27 

system is said to have been discovered by, or revealed 
to, Mrs. Mary Baker Glover Eddy in 1866. Several 
of its most distinctive positions (without their religious 
setting) are to be found in the writings, and were used 
in the practice of Mr. or Dr. P. P. Quiniby (1802- 
1866), whom Mrs. Eddy professionally consulted 
shortly before she began her own propagandum. On 
its theoretical side, the system presents a series of quasi- 
metaphysical principles and also a professed inter- 
pretation of the Scriptures ; on its practical side, it 
offers a means of curing or avoiding disease, and in- 
cludes under disease also what is more generally de- 
scribed as sin and misfortune. With Christian Science 
as a religious movement I shall not directly deal ; I 
wish, however, to point out that this assumption of a 
religious aspect finds a parallel in Spiritualism and 
Theosophy, and doubtless forms one of the most potent 
reasons for the success of these occult movements. It 
would be a most dangerous principle to admit that 
the treatment of disease and the right to ignore hygi- 
ene can become the perquisite of any religious faith. 
It would be equally unwarranted to permit the prin- 
ciples which are responsible for such beliefs to take 
shelter behind the ramparts of religious tolerance, for 
the essential principles of Christian Science do not 
constitute a form of Christianity any more than they 
constitute a science ; but, in so far as they do not alto- 
gether elude description, pertain to the domain over 
which medicine, physiology, and psychology hold sway. 
As David Harum, in speaking of his church -going 
habits, characteristically explains, " the one I stay 
away from when I don't go 's the Presbyteriun," so the 



28 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

doctrines which Christian Science " stays away from," 
are those over which recognized departments of aca- 
demic learning have the authority to decide. 

Mrs. Eddy's magnum opus, serving at once as the 
text-book of the " science " and as a revised version of 
the Scriptures, " Science and Health, with Key to the 
Scriptures," has been circulated to the extent of one 
hundred and seventy thousand copies. I shall not give 
an account of this book, nor subject its more tangible 
tenets to a logical review ; I must be content to recom- 
mend its pages as suggestive reading for the student of 
the modern occult, and to set forth in the credentials 
of quotation marks some of the dicta concerning dis- 
ease. Yet it may be due to the author, or mouthpiece, 
of this system, to begin by citing what are declared to 
be its fundamental tenets, even if their connection with 
what is built upon them is far from evident. 

"The fundamental propositions of Christian Science are 
summarized in the four following, to me, self-evident propo- 
sitions. Even if read backward, these propositions will be 
found to agree in statement and proof : — 

"1. God is AU in all. 

" 2. God is good. Good is Mind. 

" 3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter. 

" 4. Life, God, omnipotent Good, deny death, evil, sin, dis- 
ease — Disease, sin, evil, death, deny Good, omnipotent 
God, Life." 

"What is termed disease does not exist." " Matter has 
no being." " All is mind." " Matter is but the subjective 
state of what is here termed mortal ruind.'" " All disease 
is the result of education, and can carry its ill effects no 
farther than mortal mind maps out the way." " The fear 
of dissevered bodily members, or a belief in such a possibil- 



THE MODERN OCCULT 29 

ity, is reflected on the body, in the shape of headache, f rac- 
tui-ed bones, dislocated joints, and so on, as directly as shame 
is seen rising to the cheek. This human error about physi- 
cal wounds and colics is part and parcel of the delusion that 
matter can feel and see, having sensation and substance." 
" Insanity implies belief in a diseased brain, while physical 
ailments (so-called) arise from belief that some other por- 
tions of the body are deranged. ... A bunion would pro- 
duce insanity as perceptible as that produced by congestion 
of the brain, were it not that mortal mind calls the bunion 
an unconscious portion of the body. Reverse this belief and 
the results would be different." " We weep because others 
weep, we yawn because they yawn, and we have small-pox 
because others have it ; but mortal mind, not matter, con- 
tains and carries the infection." " A Christian Scientist 
never gives medicine, never recommends hygiene, never 
manipulates." " Anatomy, Physiology, Treatises on Health, 
sustained by what is termed material law, are the husband- 
men of sickness and disease." "You can even educate a 
healthy horse so far in physiology that he will take cold 
without his blanket." " If exposure to a draught of air while 
in a state of perspiration is followed by chills, dry cough, 
influenza, congestive symptoms in the lungs, or hints of in- 
flammatory rheumatism, your Mind-remedy is safe and sure. 
If you are a Christian Scientist, such symptoms will not 
follow from the exposure ; but if you believe in laws of r- 
matter and their fatal effects when transgressed, you are ? J) 
not fit to conduct your own case or to destroy the bad effects O 
of belief. When the fear subsides and the conviction abides 
that you have broken no law, neither rheumatism, consump- 
tion, nor any other disease will ever result from exposure 
to the weather." " Destroy fear and you end the fever." 
" To prevent disease or cure it mentally let spirit destroy the 
dream of sense. If you wish to heal by argument, find the 
type of the ailment, get its name, and array your mental plea 



30 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

against the physical. Argue with the patient (mentally, not 
audibly) that he has no disease, and conform the argument 
to the evidence. Mentally insist that health is the everlast- 
ing fact, and sickness the temporal falsity. Then realize the 
presence of health, and the corporeal senses will respond, so 
be it." '*My publications alone heal more sickness than an 
unconscientious student can begin to reach." " The quotients, 
when numbers have been divided by a fixed rule, are not 
more unquestionable than the scientific tests I have made of 
the effects of truth upon the sick." " I am never mistaken 
in my scientific diagnosis of disease." " Outside of Chris- 
tian Science all is vague and hypothetical, the opposite of 
Truth." " Outside Christian Science all is error." 

Surely this is a remarkable product of mortal mind ! 
It would perhaps be an interesting tour deforce^ though 
hardly so entertaining as " Alice in Wonderland," to 
construct a universe on the assertions and hypotheses 
which Christian Science presents ; but it would have 
less resemblance to the world we know than has Alice's 
wonderland. For any person for whom logic and evi- 
dence are something more real than ghosts or myths, 
the feat must always be relegated to the airy realm of 
the imagination, and must not be brought in contact 
with earthly realities. And yet the extravagance of 
Mrs. Eddy's book, its superb disdain of vulgar fact, 
its transcendental self-confidence, its solemn assumption 
that reiteration and variation of assertion somehow spon- 
taneously generate proof or self-evidence, its shrewd 
assimilation of a theological flavor, its occasional suc- 
cesses in producing a presentable travesty of scientific 
truth, — all these distinctions may be found in many a 
dust-covered volume, that represents the intensity of 



THE MODERN OCCULT 31 

conviction of some equally enthusiastic and equally in- 
spired occultist, but one less successful in securing a 
chorus to echo his refrain. 

The temptation is strong not to dismiss " Eddyism " 
without illustrating the peculiar structures under which, 
in an effort to be consistent, it is forced to take shelter. 
Since disease is always of purely mental origin, it fol- 
lows that disease and its symptoms cannot ensue with- 
out the conscious cooperation of the patient; since 
"Christian Science divests material drugs of their 
imaginary power," it follows that the labels on the 
bottles that stand on the druggist's shelves are corre- 
spondingly meaningless. And it becomes an interest- 
ing problem to inquire how the consensus of mortal 
mind came about that associates one set of symptoms 
with prussic acid, and another with alcohol, and an- 
other with quinine. Inhaling oxygen or common air 
would prepare one for the surgeon's knife, and prussic 
acid or alcohol have no more effect than water, if only 
a congress of nations were to pronounce the former 
to be anaesthetic and promulgate a decree that the 
latter be harmless. Christian Science does not flinch 
from this position. " If a dose of poison is swallowed 
through mistake and the patient dies, even though phy- 
sician and patient are expecting favorable results, does 
belief, you ask, cause this death? Even so, and as 
directly as if the poison had been intentionally taken. 
In such cases a few persons believe the potion swal- 
lowed by the patient to be harmless ; but the vast 
majority of mankind, though they know nothing of this 
particular case and this special person, believe the 
arsenic, the strychnine, or whatever the drug used, to 



32 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

be poisonous, for it has been set down as a poison by 
mortal mind. The consequence is that the result is 
controlled by the majority of opinions outside, not by 
the infinitesimal minority of opinions in the sick cham- 
ber." But why should the opinions of ol ttoWol be of 
influence in such a case, and the enlightened minorities 
be sufficient to effect the marvelous cures in all the 
other cases ? Christian Scientists do not take cold in 
draughts in spite of the contrary opinions or illusions 
of misguided majorities. The logical Christian Scien- 
tist concludes that he need not eat, " for the truth is 
food does not affect the life of man ; " and yet at once 
renounces his faith by adding, " but it would be foolish 
to venture beyond our present understanding, foolish to 
stop eating, until we gain more goodness and a clearer 
comprehension of the living God." And the mental 
physician, to be consistent, must be a mental surgeon 
also; and not plead that, "Until the advancing age 
admits the efiicacy and supremacy of mind, it is better 
to leave the adjustment of broken bones and disloca- 
tions to the fingers of surgeons." 

But it is unprofitable to consider the failings and 
absurdities of any occult system in its encounters with 
actual science and actual fact. It is simply as a real 
and prominent menace to rationality that these doc- 
trines naturally attract consideration. Regarding them 
as illustrations of present-day occult beliefs, we are 
naturally tempted to inquire what measure of (per- 
verted) truth they may contain ; but the more worthy 
question is. How do such perversions come to find so 
large a company of " supporting listeners " ? For to 
any one who can read and be convinced by the sequence 

t 



THE MODERN OCCULT 33 

of words of this system, ordinary logic has no power, 
and to him the world of reality brings no message. No 
form of the modern occult antagonizes the foundations 
of science so brusquely as this one. The possibility of 
science rests on the thorough and absolute distinction 
between the subjective and the objective. In what 
measure a man loses the power to draw this distinction 
clearly, and as other men do, in that measure he be- 
comes irrational or insane. The objective exists; and 
no amount of thinking it away or thinking it differ- 
ently will change it. That is what is understood by 
ultimate scientific truth ; something that will endure 
unmodified by passing ways of viewing it, open to 
every one's verification who comes equipped with the 
proper means to verify, — a permanent objective, to be 
ascertained by careful logical inquiry, not to be deter- 
mined by subjective opinion. Logic is the language 
of science ; Christian Science and what sane men call 
science can never communicate because they do not 
speak the same language. 

IX 

It would be unfortunate to emphasize the popular 
preeminence of Christian Science at a cost of the 
neglect of the significance of the many other forms 
of " drugless healing," which bid for public favor 
by appeal to ignorance and to occult and superstitious 
instincts. Some are allied to Christian Science, and 
like it assimilate their cult to a religious movement ; 
others are unmistakably the attempts of charlatans to 
lure the credulous by noisy advertisements of newly 
discovered and scientifically indorsed systems of " psy- 



34 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

chic force," or of some personal " ism." For many 
purposes it would be unjust to group together such 
various systems, which in the nature of things must 
include sinner and saint, the misguided sincere, the 
half -belie vers who think " there may be something in 
it," or " that it is worth a trial," along with scheming 
quacks and adepts in commercial fraud. They illus- 
trate the many and various roads traveled in the search 
for health, by pilgrims who are dissatisfied with the 
highways over which medical science pursues its stead- 
fast though it may be devious course. Among them 
there is plausible exaggeration and ignorant perversion 
and dishonest libel of the relations that bind together 
body and mind. Among the several schisms from the 
" Mother Church of Christian Scieuce " there is one 
that claims to be the " rational phase of the mental 
healing doctrine," that acknowledges the reality of dis- 
ease and the incurability of serious organic disorders, 
and resents any connection with the " half-fanatical 
personality worship " (of Mrs. Eddy) as quite as foreign 
to its tenets as would be the views of the " Free Reli- 
gious Association " to the " Pope of Eome." " Divine 
Healing " exhibits its success in one notable instance, 
in the establishment of a school and college, a bank, a 
land and investment association, a printing and pub- 
lishing office, and sundry divine healing homes ; and 
this prosperity is now to be extended by the founda- 
tion of a city or colony of converts, who shall be united 
by the common bond of faith in divine healing as trans- 
mitted in the personal power of their leader. The offi- 
cial organ of this movement announces that the person- 
ification of their faith " makes her religion a business 



THE MODERN OCCULT 35 

and conducts herself upon sound business principles ; " 
their leader publicly boasts of his vast financial re- 
turns. With emphatic protest on the part of each 
that he alone holds the key to salvation, and that his 
system is quite original and unlike any other, comes 
the procession of Metaphysical Healer and Mind-Curist 
and Viticulturist and Magnetic Healer and Astrologi- 
cal Health Guide and Phrenopathist and Medical Clair- 
voyant and Esoteric Vibrationist and Psychic Scientist 
and Mesmerist and Occultist. Some use or abuse the 
manipulations of hypnotism ; others claim the power 
to concentrate the magnetism of the air and to excite 
the vital fluids by arousing the proper mental vibra- 
tions, or by some equally lucid and demonstrable pro- 
cedure ; some advertise magnetic cups, and positive 
and negative powders, and absent treatment by out- 
puts of " psychic force," and countless other imposing 
devices. In truth, they form a motley crew, and with 
their " Colleges of Fine Forces," and " Psychic Re- 
search Companies," offering diplomas and degrees for 
a three weeks' course of study or the reading of a book, 
represent the slums of the occult. An account of their 
methods is likely to be of as much interest to the stu- 
dent of fraud as to the student of opinion. 

There can be no doubt that many of these systems 
have been stimulated into life or into renewed vigor 
by the success of Christian Science ; this is particu- 
larly noticeable in the introduction of absent treatment 
as a plank in their diverse platforms. This ingenious 
method of restoring the health of their patients and 
their own exchequers appealed to all the band of heal- 
ing occultists from Spiritualist to Vibrationist, as easily 



36 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

adaptable to their several systems. In much the same 
way Mesmer, more than a hundred years ago, adminis- 
tered to the practice which had exhausted the capacity 
of his personal attention, by magnetizing trees and sell- 
ing magnetized water. The absent treatment repre- 
sents the occult extension movement ; and unencum- 
bered by the hampering restrictions of physical forces, 
superior even to wireless telegraphy, carries its influ- 
ence into the remotest homes. From ocean to ocean, 
and from North to South, these absent healers set 
apart some hour of the day, when they mentally convey 
their healing word to the scattered members of their 
flock. On the payment of a small fee you are made 
acquainted with the " soul-communion time-table " for 
your longitude, and may know when to meet the healing 
vibrations as they pass by. Others disdain any such 
temporal details and assure a cure merely on payment 
of the fee ; the healer will know sympathetically when 
and how to transmit the curative impulses. Poverty 
and bad habits as well as disease readily succumb to 
the magic of the absent treatment. Such an hysterical 
edict as this is hardly extreme or unusual : " Join the 
Success Circle. . . . The Centre of that Circle is my 
omnipotent WORD. Daily I speak it. Its vibrations 
radiate more and more powerfully day by day. . . . As 
the sun sends out vibrations ... so my WORD radi- 
ates Success to 10,000 lives as easily as to one." 

It is impossible to appreciate fully the extravagances 
of these occult healers unless one makes a sufficient 
sacrifice of time and patience to read over a consider- 
able sample of the periodical publications with which 
American occultism fairly teems. And when one has 

I 



THE MODERN OCCULT 37 

accomplished this task he is still at sea to account for 
the readers and believers who support these various 
systems, so undreamt of in our philosophy. It would 
really seem that there is no combination of ideas too 
absurd to fail entirely of a following. Carlyle, without 
special provocation, concluded that there were about 
forty million persons in England, mostly fools ; what 
would have been his comment in the face of this vast 
and universal array of human folly ! If it be urged in 
rejoinder that beneath all this rubbish heap a true 
jewel lies buried, that the wonderful cures and the 
practical success of these various systems indicate their 
dependence upon an essential and valuable factor in the 
cure of disease and the formation of habits, it is possi- 
ble with reservation to assent, and with emphasis to 
demur. Such success, in so far as it is rightly reported, 
exemplifies the truly remarkable function of the mental 
factor in the control of normal as of disordered physi- 
ological functions. This truth has been recognized and 
utilized in unobtrusive ways for many generations, and 
within recent years has received substantial elaboration 
from carefully conducted experiments and observations. 
Specifically, the therapeutic action of suggestion, both 
in its more usual forms and as hypnotic suggestion, 
has shown to what unexpected extent such action may 
proceed in susceptible individuals. The well-informed 
and capable physician requires no instruction on this 
point; his medical education furnishes him with the 
means of determining the symptoms of true organic 
disorder, of functional derangement, and of the modi- 
fications of these under the more or less unconscious 
interference of an unfortunate nervous system. It is 



38 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

quite as human for the physician as for other mortals 
to err ; and there is doubtless as wide a range among 
them, as among other pursuits, of ability, tact, and in- 
sight. " But when all is said and done," the funda- 
mental fact remains that the utilization of the mental 
factor in the alleviation of disease will be best admin- 
istered by those who are specifically trained in the 
knowledge of bodily and of mental symptoms of dis- 
ease. Such application of an established scientific prin- 
ciple may prove to be a jewel of worth in the hands of 
him who knows how to cut and set it. The difference 
between truth and error, between science and supersti- 
tion, between what is beneficent to mankind and what 
is pernicious, frequently lies in the interpretation and 
the spirit as much as, or more than, in the fact. The 
utilization of mental influences in health and disease 
becomes the one or the other according to the wisdom 
and the truth and the insight into the real relations of 
things, that guide its application. As far removed as 
chemistry from alchemy, as astronomy from astrology, 
as the doctrine of the localization of function in the 
brain from phrenology, as hypnotic suggestion from 
animal magnetism, are the crude and perverse notions 
of Christian Scientist or Metaphysical Healer removed 
from the rational application of the influence of the 
mind over the body. 



The growth and development of the occult presents 
an interesting problem in the psychology of belief. 
The motives that induce the will to believe in the 
several doctrines that have been passed in review are 

1 



THE MODERN OCCULT 39 

certainly not more easy to detect and to describe than 
would be the case in reference to the many other 
general problems — philosophical, scientific, religious, 
social, political, or educational — on which the right to 
an opinion is accepted as an inalienable heritage of 
humanity or at least of democracy. Professor James 
tells us that often " our faith is faith in some one else's 
faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case." 
Certainly the waves of popularity of one cult and 
another reflect the potent influence of contagion in 
the formation of opinion and the guidance of conduct. 
When we look upon the popular delusions of the past 
through the achromatic glasses which historical remote- 
ness from present conditions enables us to adjust to our 
eyes, we marvel that good and great men could have been 
so grossly misled, that obvious relations and fallacies 
could have been so stupidly overlooked, that worthless 
and prejudiced evidence could have been accepted as 
sound and significant. But the opinions to which we 
incline are all colored o'er with the deep tinge of 
emotional reality, which is the living expression of our 
interest in them or our inclination toward them. What 
they require is a more vigorous infusion of the pale 
cast of thought ; for the problem of the occult and the 
temptations to belief which it holds out are such as can 
be met only by a sturdy application of a critical logic. 
Only as logical thoroughness comes to prevail over 
superficial plausibility, as beliefs come to be formed 
and evidence estimated according to their intrinsic value 
rather than according to their emotional acceptability, 
will the propagandum of the occult meet with greater 
resistance and aversion. 



40 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

The fixation of belief proceeds under the influence 
both of general and of special forces ; the formation of 
a belief is at once a personal and a social reaction — a 
reaction to the evidence which recorded and personal 
experiences present, and to the current beliefs of our 
environment. To an equal extent is the reaction de- 
termined by the temperament of the reagent. And 
although the resulting individual beliefs, however com- 
plex, are not matters of chance nor are their causes 
altogether past finding out, yet some of their contrib-^ 
uting factors are so vague and so inaccessible that 
they are most profitably considered as specific results 
of more or less clearly discerned general principles ; 
and in many respects there is more valid interest in 
the general principles than in the particular results. 
It is interesting, and it may be profitable, to investigate 
why this area is wooded with oak and that with maple, 
but it is somewhat idle to speculate why this particular 
tree happens to be a maple rather than an oak, even 
if it chances to stand on our own property, and to have 
an interest to us beyond all other trees. 

Among the more tangible tendencies that in various 
ways lead to the occult there is distinguishable what 
may be termed the intensely personal temperament, — 
the mental attitude that absorbs knowledge only when 
dissolved in an all-pervading personal medium ; the 
attitude that finds a paramount significance in the 
personal interpretation of experiences, and reacts to 
massive and extensive generalizations most vaguely 
and impotently ; the attitude that offers a weak and 
verbal assent to scientific principles and to the reali- 
ties of nature, but inwardly cherishes an intense belief 



THE MODERN OCCULT 41 

in the personal purport of the order of events, and 
earnestly seeks for a precise explanation of indivi- 
dual happenings. " The chronic belief of mankind," 
says Professor James, "that events may happen for 
the sake of their personal significance is an abomi- 
nation." It is this chronic mental habit that broods 
upon the problem of subjective experiences, and is 
ready to recognize in signs and omens the guiding 
principle of rationality ; not that this is always done 
designedly and superstitiously, but the underlying bent 
obscures the consideration of experience in any other 
than a personal light, and obstructs that illumination 
of the concrete by the generic, which constitutes an in- 
dispensable factor in the growth of wholesome thought. 
The victim of this unfortunate habit will remain 
logically unfit to survive the struggle against the 
occult. Only in so far as he succeeds in getting away 
from his personal perspective will he be able to appre- 
ciate the true status of the problem which enlists his 
interest. Above all is it necessary to subordinate ex- 
plicit individual explanations to the general illumina- 
tion of well - established principles. It may be in- 
teresting to note that the partaking of mince-pie at 
evening induces bad dreams, but it is hardly profit- 
able to speculate deeply why my dream took the form 
of a leering demon with the impolite habit of squat- 
ting on my chest. The stuff that dreams are made 
of is not susceptible of that type of analysis. The 
most generous allowance must be made for coinci- 
dences and irrelevancies, and it must be constantly re- 
membered that the obscure phenomena of psychology, 
and, indeed, the phenomena of more thoroughly estab- 



42 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

lislied and intrinsically more definite sciences, cannot 
be expected to pass the test of detailed and concrete 
combinations of circumstances. In other classes of 
knowledge the temptation to demand such explicit 
explanations of observations and experiences is not so 
strong, because of the absence of an equally strong 
personal interest ; but clearly this does not affect the 
logical status of the problem. 

The reply to this argument I can readily anticipate ; 
and I confess that my admiration of Hamlet is some- 
what dulled by reason of that ill-advised remark to 
Horatio about there being more things in heaven and 
earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies. The 
occultist always seizes upon that citation to refute the 
scientist. He prints it as his motto on his books and 
journals, and regards it as a slow poison that will in 
time effect the destruction of the rabble of scientists, 
and reveal the truth of his own Psycho-Harmonic 
Science or Heliocentric Astrology. It is one thing to 
be open-minded, and to realize the incompleteness of 
scientific knowledge, and to appreciate how often what 
was ignored by one generation has become the science 
of the next ; and it is a very different thing to be im- 
pressed with coincidences and dreams and premoni- 
tions, and to regard them as giving the keynote to the 
conceptions of nature and reality, and to look upon 
science as a misdirected effort. Such differences of 
attitude depend frequently upon a difference of tem- 
perament as well as upon intellectual discernment. 
The man or the woman who flies to the things not 
dreamt of in our philosophy quite commonly does not 
understand the things which our philosophy very 

t 



THE MODERN OCCULT 43 

creditably explains. The two types of mind are differ- 
ent, and, as Professor James expresses it, " the scien- 
tific-academic mind and the feminine-mystical mind 
shy from each other's facts just as they fly from each, 
other's temper and spirit." 

Certain special influences combine with these funda- 
mental differences of attitude to favor the spread of 
belief in the occult ; and of these the character of the 
beliefs as of the believers furnishes some evidence. At 
various stages of the discussion I have referred to the 
deceptive nature of the argument by analogy ; to tbe 
dominating sympathy with a conclusion, and the re- 
sulting assimilation and overestimation of apparent 
evidence in its favor ; to the frequent failure to under- 
stand that the formation of valid opinion and the inter- 
pretation of evidence in any field of inquiry require 
somewhat of expert training and special aptitude, 
obviously so in technical matters, but only moderately 
less so in matters misleadingly regarded as general ; 
to bias and superstition, to the weakness tbat bends 
easily to the influences of contagion, to unfortunate 
educational limitations and perversions, and, not the 
least, to a defective grounding in the nature of scien- 
tific fact and proof. The mystery attaching to the 
behavior of the magnet led Mesmer to call his cura- 
tive influence " animal magnetism," — a conception 
that still prevails among latter-day occultists. The 
principle of sympathetic vibration, in obedience to 
which a tuning-fork takes up the vibrations of another 
in unison with it, is violently transferred to imaginary 
brain vibrations and to still more imaginary telepathic 
currents. The X-ray and wireless telegraphy are cer- 



44 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

tain to be utilized in corroboration of unproven modes 
of mental action, and will be regarded as furnishing 
the key to clairvoyance and rapport ; just as well-known 
electrical phenomena have given rise to the notions of 
positive and negative temperaments and mediumistic 
polar attraction and repulsion. All this results from 
the unwarranted and absurd application of analogies ; 
for analogies, even when appropriate, are little more 
than suggestive or corroborative of relations or con- 
ceptions which owe their main support to other and 
more sturdy evidence. Analogy under careful super- 
vision may make a useful apprentice, but endless havoc 
results when the servant plays the part of the master. 

No better illustrations could be desired of the effects 
of mental prepossession and the resulting distortion of 
evidence and of logical insight than those afforded by 
the career of Spiritualism and that of Christian Science. 
In both these movements the assimilation of a religious 
trend has been of inestimable importance to their dis- 
semination. Surely it is not merely or mainly the 
evidences obtainable in the seance chamber, nor the 
irresistible accumulation of cures by argument and 
thought-healings, that account for the organized gather- 
ings of Spiritualists and the costly temples and thriving 
congregations of Christ Scientist. It is the presenta- 
tion of a practical doctrine of immortality and of the 
spiritual nature of disease in conjunction with an ac- 
cepted religious system, that is responsible for these 
vast results. The " Key to the Scriptures " has im- 
measurably reinforced the " Science and Health," and 
brought believers to a new form of Christianity who 
never would have been converted to a new system of 

/ 



THE MODEEN OCCULT 45 

medicine presented on purely intellectual grounds. 
Kationality is doubtless a characteristic tendency of 
humanity, but logicality is an acquired possession, and 
one by no means firmly established in the race at large. 
So long as we are reproved by the discipline of nature, 
and that rather promptly, we tend to act in accordance 
with the established relations of things ; that is ration- 
ality. But the recognition of the more remote connec- 
tions between antecedent and consequent, and the de- 
velopment of habits of thought which shall lead to 
reliable conclusions in complex situations ; and again, 
the ability to distinguish between the plausible and the 
true, the firmness to support principle in the face of 
paradox and seeming nonconformity, to think clearly 
and consistently in the absence of the practical reproof 
of nature — that is logicality. It is only as the result 
of a prolonged and conscientious training, aided by an 
extensive experience and by a knowledge of the histori- 
cal experience of the race, that the inherent rational 
tendencies develop into established logical habits and 
principles of belief. For many this development re- 
mains stunted or arrested ; and they continue as chil- 
dren of a larger growth, leaning much on others, rarely 
venturing abroad alone, and wisely confining their ex- 
cursions to familiar ground. When they become pos- 
sessed with the desire to travel among other cultures, 
their lack of appreciation of the sights which their 
journeys bring before them gives to their reports the 
same degree of reliability and value as attaches to the 
much ridiculed comments of the philistine nouveaux 
riches. 

The survey of the modern occult makes it seem quite 



46 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

Utopian to look forward to the day when the occult 
shall have disappeared, and the lion and the lamb 
shall feed and grow strong on the same nourishment. 
Doubtless new forms and phases of the occult will 
arise to take the place of the old as their popularity 
declines ; and the world will be the more interesting 
and more characteristically a human dwelling-place for 
containing all sorts and conditions of minds. None 
the less, it is the plain duty and privilege of each 
generation to utilize every opportunity to dispel error 
and superstition, and to oppose the dissemination of 
irrational beliefs. It is particularly the obligation of 
the torch-bearers of science to illuminate the path 
of progress, and to transmit the light to their suc- 
cessors with undiminished power and brilliancy; the 
flame must burn both as a beacon-light to guide the 
wayfarer along the highways of advance, and as a 
warning against the will-o'-the-wisps that shine seduc- 
tively in the by-ways. The safest and most efficient 
antidote to the spread of the pernicious tendencies 
inherent in the occult lies in the cultivation of a 
wholesome and whole-souled interest in the genuine 
and profitable problems of nature and of life, and in 
the cultivation with it of a steadfast adherence to 
common sense, that results in a right perspective of 
the significance and value of things. These qualities, 
fortunately for our forefathers, were not reserved to be 
the exclusive prerogative of the modern; and, fortu- 
nately for posterity, are likely to remain characteristic 
of the scientific and antagonistic to the occult. 



THE PEOBLEMS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 



The division of the sciences reflects the diversity of 
human interests ; it represents the economical adapta- 
tion of organized thought to the conditions of reality ; 
and it likewise recognizes the intrinsically and objec- 
tively distinct realms and aspects, in which and under 
which phenomena occur. It is obvious that the sciences 
were shaped by human needs ; that physics and chem- 
istry and geology and biology and psychology do not 
constitute independent departments of nature's regime, 
but only so many aspects of complex natural activities ; 
that a cross-section of the composite happenings of a 
cosmic moment would reveal an endlessly heterogeneous 
concomitance of diverse forms of energy acting upon 
diverse types of material ; that, as we confine our atten- 
tion somewhat arbitrarily to one or another component 
of the aggregate, we become physicists, or chemists, or 
geologists, or biologists, or psychologists ; that, indeed, 
Nature is all things to all men. There is, furthermore, 
a community of spirit between the several sciences, as 
there is a logical unity of method and purpose within 
the realm of each. However ignorant they may be of 
one another's facts, the chemist and the psychologist 
readily appreciate one another's purposes, and find a 
bond of sympathy in the pursuit of a commonly in- 
spired though differently applied method. The search 



48 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

for objective truth, the extension of the realm of law 
and regularity, the expansion and organization of the 
army of facts constantly marshaled and reviewed and 
made ready for service, the ever widening development 
of principles and the furthering of a deeper insight 
into their significance, — these are ideals for the ad- 
vancement of science, far easier of expression than of 
execution, but the clear and accepted formulation of 
which itself attests a highly developed stage of accurate 
thought. A clear-cut conception of the purposes and 
methods of scientific investigation and of the scope of 
the several sciences is a dearly bought product of 
generations of well-directed, as also of misdirected, 
effort. The path of progress leading to this achieve- 
ment has been tortuous and indirect ; there has been 
much expenditure of energy that resulted merely in 
marking time, in going through the movements of 
locomotion but with no advance, in following a false 
trail, or, through a loss of the sense of direction, in 
coming back after a circuitous march to an earlier 
starting-point. It is easy, when a certain height is 
reached, to look down and back, and see how much 
more readily the ascent might have been accomplished ; 
but it is a very different matter to form a successful 
plan for attaining the next higher commanding point. 
It is inevitable that there shall be differences of opinion 
as to course and manoeuvre, and errors of judgment of 
commission and omission ; but such diversity is quite 
consistent with an underlying cooperation and single- 
ness of purpose. It is in the inspiration and in the 
execution of that purpose that science becomes differ- 
entiated from the unscientific and non-scientific. 



THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 49 

Between the organized effort and well-recognized 
plan of action of science and the chaotic movements of 
the untutored mind, there is a marked contrast. The 
savage, like the child, constantly meets with the unex- 
pected ; every experience lying outside his narrow 
beaten track stirs him with a shock and often fills him 
with fear — the handmaid of ignorance. He is apt to 
picture nature as a fearful monster, and to people the 
world with tyrannical beings. Step by step the legion 
of the known expands, and suggests the nature of the 
unknown ; men expect, they foresee, they predict. 
The apparent chaos of mutually inimical forces gives 
way to the profound harmony of unifying law. And 
yet the unknown and the borderland that separates it 
from the known are always near by, to tempt curiosity 
and the spirit of adventure. 

The problem here to be considered relates to the 
attitude which may most properly and profitably be 
taken with regard to the outlying phenomena of the 
mind. Are they outcasts, to be treated in a spirit of 
charity and forbearance ? Are they the true owners of 
the land, driven off, like the Indian before the white 
man, by the relentless march of civilization to a pre- 
scribed reservation? Are they the unjustly deposed 
and rightful heirs, soon to be restored to their kingdom 
by a fairer and more searching examination of their 
title? Or are they, gypsy-like, of obscure origin, sur- 
viving in a civilization which they are in but not 
of, attempting to eke out an uncertain existence by 
peddling relics of antiquated lore to the curious and 
the credulous ? 



50 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

II 

The current usage of the term "Psychical Eesearch" 
takes its meaning from the Society for Psychical Re- 
search, founded in England in 1882. The original 
programme of the society involved a systematic investi- 
gation of " that large group of debatable phenomena 
designated by such terms as mesmeric, psychical, and 
Spiritualistic." " From the recorded testimony of 
many competent witnesses," it is urged, "there appears 
to be, amidst much delusion and deception, an import- 
ant body of remarkable phenomena, which are 'prima 
facie inexplicable on any generally recognized hypothe- 
sis, and which, if incontestably established, would be 
of the highest possible value." The work of investi- 
gation of these " residual phenomena " was intrusted 
to six committees, who were to inquire severally into 
" the nature and extent of any influence which may be 
exerted by one mind upon another, apart from any 
generally recognized mode of perception ; " into hypno- 
tism, the so-called mesmeric trance, clairvoyance, 
and other allied phenomena ; to undertake a revision 
of Reichenbach's researches with reference to discover- 
ing whether his " sensitives " possessed " any power of 
perception beyond a highly exalted sensibility of the 
recognized sensory organs ; " to investigate the reports 
of apparitions at the moment of death, and of houses 
reputed to be haunted ; to inquire into the causes and 
general laws of the phenomena of Spiritualism ; and to / 
collect material relative to the history of these subjects. 
It is the investigation of these topics from the point of 
view prevalent in the publications of this Society that 



THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 51 

constitutes the definition of Psychical Research. This 
phrase, which has come into prominence within less than 
a score of years, has no simple or familiar synonym ; it 
must not be interpreted by the combined connotation of 
its component words, but must be accepted as the tech- 
nical equivalent of the trend and content of a certain 
type of investigation of obscure phenomena or alleged 
phenomena, in most of which psychological factors are 
prominent. 

If the term may at all be brought within the circle 
of the sciences, it certainly there assumes a somewhat 
unique position. It naturally becomes the analogue, or 
it may be the rival of Psychology ; yet its precise status 
and its logical relations to other departments of scien- 
tific research are far from obvious. The modern con- 
ception of Psychology is generously comprehensive ; it 
encompasses the endlessly variable and complex pro- 
cesses of human mentality ; it pursues with enthusiasm 
the study of developmental processes of intelligence in 
childhood, in the animal world, in the unfoldment of 
the race ; it studies, for their own value, the aberrant 
and pathological forms of mental action, and brings 
these into relation with, and thus illuminates the com- 
prehension of the normal. It forms affiliations with 
physiology and biology and medicine, with philosophy 
and logic and ethics, with anthropology and sociology 
and folk-lore ; it borrows freely from their materials, 
and attempts to interpret the materials thus borrowed 
from the psychological point of view and to infuse 
into them its distinctive spirit. Surely Psychical Re- 
search should be able to find a nook in so commodious 
a home ; if the problems of Psychical Research are 



52 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

legitimate members of the psychological family, some 
provision should be possible for their reception within 
the old homestead. Nor does this group of problems 
represent a difference of school, in some such way as the 
homoeopathists represent a secession from the regular 
school of medicine ; nor can it be regarded as the special 
study of the unusual and the abnormal in the sphere of 
mind, and thus stand in the relation which teratology 
or pathology bears to physiology and anatomy: for in 
that event it would constitute a simple division of Ab- 
normal Psychology, and although Psychical Research 
has close alliance with the latter, it cannot be, and is 
unwilling to be regarded as a subordinate portion of 
that domain. 

From a survey of the literature of Psychical Re- 
search one might readily draw the inference that 
whereas Psychology studies the recognized and expli- 
cable phases of mental phenomena, Psychical Re- 
search is occupied with the disputed and mysterious. 
One might also conclude that whereas Psychology is 
concerned with the phenomena commonly associated 
with mental activities and their variation under normal 
as also under unusual and pathological circumstances. 
Psychical Research is interested in the demonstration of 
supernormal faculties, and in the establishment of forms 
of mentality that diverge from and transcend those 
with which every-day humanity is permitted to become 
familiar; and that, moreover, in some of its excursions 
Psychical Research does not limit itself to mental 
manifestations, but investigates undiscovered forms of 
physical energy, and seriously considers whether behind 
and beyond the world of phenomena there is another 

/ 



THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 53 

and a different world, in which the established order 
and the mental and material laws of this planet do not 
obtain. But the unwarranted character, not to say ab- 
surdity, of such a differentiation or classification is at 
once apparent, if we attempt to carry it over into other 
departments of science. Speculations in regard to the 
constitution of the earth's centre or as to the future 
of our planet, if legitimate in character, are as readily 
incorporable into geology as the consideration of more 
definite and better known phenomena ; biologists recog- 
nize that there are mythical as well as anomalous por- 
tions of their domain, but do not consider that freaks 
of nature either destroy the validity of anatomical and 
physiological principles, or demand a totally distinct and 
transcendent organization or method for their study. 
The chemist may become interested in the examination 
of what was really done when it was supposed that other 
metals were converted into gold ; the physicist may be- 
come interested in the applications of electricity and 
magnetism, of optical reflections and images in the pro- 
duction of stage illusions; but the conception of chem- 
istry and of physics naturally embraces considerations 
of the growth, the errors, and the applications of these 
sciences. And while these comparisons do not fur- 
nish a complete parallel to the relation that seems to 
pertain between Psychology and Psychical Research, 
yet it is as true in the one case as in the others, that 
the differentiation of a group of problems on the basis 
of unusualness of occurrence, of mysteriousness of 
origin, of doubtful authenticity, or of apparent para- 
doxical or transcendent character, is as illogical as it 
is unnecessary. The legitimate problems of Psychical 



54 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

Researcli are equally and necessarily genuine problems 
of Psychology, that require no special designation. 
They need not be especially important, nor interest- 
ing, nor profitable, nor well comprehended problems 
of Psychology, but they belong there if they are sci- 
entific problems at all. The objection to Psychical 
Research is not a verbal one ; it is an objection to the 
separation of a class of problems from their natural 
habitat, an objection to the violent transplanting of a 
growth from its own environment. It is a protest 
against the notion that while the psychologist may be 
listened to with respect and authority in one portion 
of his topic, the layman and the member of the Society 
for Psychical Research are equally or more competent 
to pronounce judgments in a closely allied field. It is 
a protest against the view that for the comprehension 
of such processes as sensation and perception a course 
in Psychology may be useful, but that telepathy may 
be established by any moderately intelligent but not 
specially informed percipient and agent ; or that the 
study of hallucinations is indeed a complex and diffi- 
cult subject, but haunted houses, and phantasms of the 
living, offer a proper occupation for a leisure hour. 
All this is wrong and absurd ; and yet it is hardly an 
exaggeration to declare that a majority of those who 
profess a deep interest in, and express an opinion 
about the one group of topics, would be surprised to 
have demanded of them a familiarity with the data 
of Psychology as a prerequisite to an intelligent co- 
operation in Psychical Research. If the problems of 
Psychical Research, or that portion of the problems 
in which investigation seems profitable, are ever to 



THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 55 

be illuminated and exhibited in an intelligible form, 
it will only come about when they are investigated by 
the same methods and in the same spirit as are other 
psychological problems, when they are studied in con- 
nection with and as a part of other general problems of 
normal and abnormal Psychology. Whether this is 
done under the auspices of a society or in the psycho- 
logical laboratories of universities is, of course, a detail 
of no importance. It is important, however, what the 
trend, and the spirit, and the method, and the purpose 
of the investigation may be ; as it is equally important, 
what may be the training, and the capabilities, and the 
resources, and the originality, and the scholarship of 
the investigators. 

Is the " psychical researcher " then merely a psycholo- 
gist gone astray ? Is he a mere dilettante, an amateur 
collector of curious specimens, or is he something very 
different from a psychologist ? He is doubtless one 
or the other or aU of these. He may be a psycholo- 
gist in the truest and best sense of the word ; and as 
aU psychologists have their special interests, so his 
may be centred in the group of phenomena which 
have been unwisely separated from their milieu^ and 
have been inaptly termed '' Psychical Research." I 
am ready not only to admit but to emphasize that a 
considerable portion of the influential contributors to 
Psychical Research are animated by as truly scien- 
tific motives, and carry on their work with as much 
devotion and ability, with as careful a logical acumen, 
with as shrewd comprehension of the dangers and diffi- 
culties of their topic, as characterize the labors of any 
other field of psychological endeavor. But this state- 



56 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

ment can by no means be extended to all ; nor does it at 
all militate against the opinion tbat many of those to 
whom it does apply, subscribe to illogical and perni- 
cious conclusions, and indirectly encourage a most un- 
fortunate attitude in others. 

Ill 

Approaching the matter next from a descriptive 
point of view, it becomes pertinent to inquire what 
are the actual interests which give vitality to Psychi- 
cal Research, which support the investigator in his 
laborious and tedious collection and compilation of 
cases, which provide the membership for the Society 
for Psychical Research, and the still wider circle of 
interested readers, which induce so many correspond- 
ents to record long and painstaking accounts of their 
peculiar " psychical " experiences, which make the dis- 
cussion of these matters a favorite topic of conversa- 
tion. That these interests are diverse is obvious ; yet 
they fall naturally into a few groups or types, of which 
the occult interest is probably the most widespread. 
This, in its pronounced form, proceeds upon a suppressed 
or acknowledged conviction that the world which science 
reveals is but a torso of reality ; that its very head — 
that which gives significance and expression to the 
whole — may be missing, and can only be restored 
from isolated fragments, themselves to be found by 
rare good fortune. The key to the riddle of existence 
is to be sought in the personal significance of events ; in 
moments of great stress and strain, in critical emergen- 
cies when communication between individuals deeply 
concerned must be established though the heavens 

/ 



THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 57 

fall, it is claimed that the heavens do occasionally fall, 
that the laws of earth are transcended, and the phan- 
tasms of the dying are telepathically wafted to the 
sentient consciousness of the interested kinsman or 
friend. Apparitions and presentiments are interpreted 
as mystic symbols of the order of events, which cast 
their shadows before or coincidently with them. The 
intelligence of the departed, likewise, is discerned in 
these manifestations ; and through haunted houses and 
stance chambers, through the inspired utterances of 
entranced mediums, messages are revealed that indi- 
cate conclusively the impossibility of their transmission 
through ordinary channels, or, it may be, their unmis- 
takable '' spiritual " origin. The supernormal, tran- 
scendent, undiscovered world of the occult shines 
through, though fitfully and visible only to those who 
have eyes to see, the commonplace, constrained phe- 
nomena of earth-bound reality. Variable as may be 
the formulation and trend of this interest, yet in some 
form this suspicion or quasi-belief (for which the term 
" occult " seems appropriate) that there are things un- 
dreamt of in our philosophy, that these residual phe- 
nomena are profoundly significant and afford a glimpse 
of the great unknown, as well as of the fallibility and the 
poverty of scientific conceptions, furnishes a very con- 
siderable clientele of Psychical Research. The why 
and wherefore of this inclination need not here be dis- 
cussed; its prevalence is unmistakable. And though 
it appears now in a crude and superstitious guise, 
and again in a more refined and critical attitude,, and 
more rarely is unwillingly assumed as the only possible 
alternative in the face of striking personal and other 



58 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

evidence, yet there is a sufficient community of belief 
in these several positions to warrant their inclusion in a 
common though variable type. As applied to Psychi- 
cal Research, it is important neither to generalize from 
the worst nor from the best expressions of this occult 
interest, but to appreciate its range of distribution 
amid the diversity of temperament and endowment. 

As the occult interest recedes to an obscure position 
in the background, and as the foreground and middle 
distance come to be suffused with the light of critical 
discernment and of the scientific spirit of inquiry, the 
" psychical researcher " approximates to the psycho- 
logical point of view. This essentially psychological in- 
terest is necessarily a strong one in some of the distinc- 
tive problems of Psychical Research, and often mingles 
with other interests to form a curious composite. It 
may be a morbid, an uninformed, a misguided, a dilet- 
tante interest, but its psychological character may be 
noted without implication of any further comment of 
approval or disapproval. Favorably interpreted, this 
psychological interest is an interest in the intrinsic 
nature and analysis of mental processes, — an interest 
in tracing the various threads that compose the twisted 
strands of consciousness, in following the kaleido- 
scopic transformations wrought by attention and asso- 
ciation, in observing the play of habit, the subtle pro- 
cesses of illusion and misinterpretation, the unexpected 
intrusion of the subconscious, and likewise in the pur- 
suit of these as exemplified in concrete instances ; among 
others, in such alleged phenomena as are commonly 
described as " mesmeric, psychical, and Spiritualistic." 

While this interest may be combined with the occult 

/ 



THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 59 

interest, the two are not really congenial and are 
in essence antagonistic. We are all rational only in 
spots ; and many a " psychical researcher " pursues 
some of his investigations under the guidance of a sci- 
entifically psychological interest, while in other direc- 
tions the occult interest takes the helm. The analysis 
of the contrast between the two may be helpful in 
realizing more fully the divergences of Psychology 
and Psychical Research. The " psychical researcher " 
wishes to prove or to disprove something ; with re- 
gard to this or that phenomenon he wishes to know 
" what there is in it," and is accordingly attracted to 
phenomena which seem to have something mysterious 
in them. As soon as he succeeds in finding a con- 
sistent and commonplace explanation for a group of 
phenomena, his main curiosity is satisfied, and he takes 
to pastures new. When once he has shown that theo- 
sophic marvels are the result of trickery and collusion, 
then the physical appearances of Theosophy have been 
explained. It has been demonstrated that there is 
" nothing in them," that is, nothing transcendental. The 
verdict is given, and the court passes on to the next 
case. But the psychologist's interest in how Mme. Bla- 
vatsky performed her astral manifestations was always 
a very subordinate and incidental one ; the logical sci- 
entist, whether he happened to be physicist or biologist 
or psychologist, was quite convinced that Mme. Bla- 
vatsky had not discovered the means of carrying pon- 
derables by unseen agencies from " China to Peru " 
(which, by the way, would, if possible, be a matter 
for the physicist and not at all for the psychologist to 
investigate), any more than she had been able to dis- 



60 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

cover the secret of immortality (which would in turn 
be a biological discovery), or had been able to leave 
her body in New York, while her "astral" soul in- 
spected what was going on in India (which might 
indeed be regarded as a psychological feat). The 
psychological problem of Theosophy, so far as there is 
one, is of a different type ; it takes up the inquiry 
as to how such marvelous pretensions come to be 
believed, by what influences conviction is formed and 
doctrines spread. It contributes an incident or an 
apt illustration to the psychology of belief, or to the 
social psychology of contagion. The psychologist is 
interested in the illustration which such a movement 
affords of the action of certain mental processes and 
influences ; and his interest persists, whether there is 
presumably " something in it," or not. The resulting 
difference in attitude between the psychologist and the 
" psychical researcher " is indeed fundamental, and 
even more so in principle than in practical issue. 

It is desirable but not easy to find parallel illustra- 
tions of this difference in attitude in other than psy- 
chological discussions ; but perhaps the following may 
be pertinent. If the widespread interest in the North 
Pole were merely that in the possibility of its furnish- 
ing the key to the mystery of the northward-turning 
magnet, and were at once to disappear upon the re- 
moval of the mystery, such an interest would be quite 
parallel to that of the " psychic researcher ; " but the 
interest of the true physicist in any physical phe- 
nomenon which in the future may be demonstrated to 
exist at the North Pole would be a persistent one, and 
one depending for its value on the illlustration thus 

/ 



THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 61 

revealed, not of mystery but of recognized physical 
principles. Furthermore, be it observed that however 
valuable may be the physical facts obtainable by a 
polar expedition, there is no overwhelming obligation 
resting upon every physicist to desert his laboratory 
and embark for the farthest north ; but that such 
expeditions are decided by considerations of general 
interest, expediency, and importance. There is no 
obligation resting upon the physicist any more than 
upon the psychologist to make large sacrifices for the 
pursuit of ill-defined residual phenomena, and certainly 
not for the refutal of far-fetched theories and suggested 
supernatural notions. Physicist and psychologist alike 
contribute most to the advancement of their science by 
an open-minded but systematic pursuit of definite, sig- 
nificant, and logically fashioned problems. 

Let it not be inferred from the emphasis placed upon 
this contrast that Psychical Research is in itself to be 
condemned or to be regarded as useless. Not at all ; 
only in many aspects it is not psychological, and the 
psychologist is under no obligation to find an interest 
in, nor to occupy himself with, this aspect of things, if 
his general trend does not happen to point that way. 
The physicist may be called upon with equal propriety 
to aid in many inquiries which the Society for Psychical 
Research has undertaken. Among the early records of 
the Society appears an account of a man who presented 
himself with an iron ring on his arm, far too small 
to have been slipped over his hand, and who seemed to 
imply that possibly the spirits put it there, or that it 
came on through some supernatural agency. This was 
regarded as a proper case for the Society for Psychical 



62 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

Research to examine. If it could have been demon- 
strated that the ring reached its position through the 
exercise of the will of some living persons or spirits, 
the phenomenon, I suppose, would in some sense be 
psychological ; if it were demonstrated that it came 
transported through the fourth dimension of space, it 
might be termed physical. But in reality it was prob- 
ably physiological, for there was evidence that it was by 
the effects of etherization that the hand was contracted 
and that the ring was forced over it. Surely it is most 
absurd to designate such an inquiry, however interest- 
ing and proper it may be regarded, Psychical Research. 
It certainly is a highly commendable function for a so- 
ciety to take upon itself the investigation of such claims 
as theosophy or spiritualism put forward, whenever 
movements of this type are likely to develop into psychic 
epidemics or to prove a social menace. Any authorita- 
tive body that will exhibit the absurdity of such claims, 
and expose the true modus operandi of the manifesta- 
tions, will perform an important civic function. Such 
a function was performed by the Royal Commission 
of 1784, in exposing the vain pretensions and the in- 
sidious dangers of animal magnetism ; Mr. Hodgson's 
investigations of theosophy, the Seybert Commission's 
report on spiritualism, are both able and useful contri- 
butions of the same type ; and, at present, an authori- 
tative statement regarding the theoretical absurdity and 
the practical dangers of Christian Science might prove 
efficacious. Such special investigations represent the 
practical application of science to concrete conditions 
and problems ; they are woefully misnamed, and their 
significance is likely to be misinterpreted, when they 

/ 



THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 63 

are presented as Psychical Research, and are grouped 
along with other problems of a totally different nature. 

I shall next touch briefly upon other diverse yet 
allied interests in Psychical Research, which may 
serve to illustrate further the various avenues of ap- 
proach to this heterogeneous group of problems. I 
shall speak of these as the explanatory, the investiga- 
tive, and the anthropological interests. The first is 
satisfied with finding out how alleged marvels are 
really performed ; it takes up the physical phenomena 
of spiritualism or theosophy ; it investigates conjuring 
tricks ; it discovers the origin of noises in haunted 
houses ; it ferrets out the means whereby mediums 
obtain knowledge of their sitters' private affairs. This 
is proper work for experts in prestidigitation and for de- 
tectives, — not for all such, for to be successful, the con- 
jurer and the detective must have special knowledge and 
fitness for this branch of the trade. While the facts thus 
gathered may be useful as illustrative material to the 
psychologist, they form no essential part of his profes- 
sion ; nor is there any special reason why he should be 
best suited to determine the technical modus operandi 
of such manifestations. That some psychologists with 
a strong interest in this type of phenomena might 
properly cooperate in such an investigation, if they 
chose, is too obvious to merit remark ; but to trace out 
and expose trickery cannot be imposed upon the bur- 
densome duties of the psychologist. 

With a certain type of " psychical researcher " this 
explanatory interest is the dominant one ; and by dis- 
pelling error and replacing false notions by true onefii 
he may perform a useful service to the community. 



64 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

The explanatory interest is quite certain to be supple- 
mented by the investigative, and that because the latter 
soon becomes necessary to the former. While the one 
is concerned with the explanation and description of 
the actual marvels accomplished, the other must con- 
sider also what is reported and what is believed to have 
been accomplished. The mechanism of a trick, whether 
brought forward as evidence of spiritualism or not, 
when clearly exhibited, explains the trick ; a loose 
board under the roof, or the reflection from a lustrous 
surface, may at once reveal how mysterious noises and 
lights were really produced. But one must go far- 
ther to account for the recognition of relatives in the 
form of the medium covered with flimsy drapery, for 
the automatic spelling out of messages, or for the suc- 
cesses of guessing experiments. These two interests 
thus proceed hand in hand and furnish valuable mate- 
rial which the psychologist is ready to interpret and to 
utilize ; for the study of how false beliefs spread, of 
how deception proceeds, teems with points of psycho- 
logical significance. This, however, is by no means 
a unique characteristic of Psychical Research ; there 
are also interesting psychological points in such diverse 
occupations as the actor's profession, in juggling and 
tricks of skill, in advertising, in religious revivals, etc. 
It is highly desirable that the materials thus gathered 
should be psychologically utilized, and it is equally 
desirable that such material should be collected. Many 
valuable studies in Psychical Research, which owe 
their origin not to a truly psychological interest but 
to this general explanatory and investigative interest, 
have incidentally brought to light material of great 

/ 



THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 65 

suggestiveness for tlie psychologist, and material which 
quite possibly would not otherwise have been discov- 
ered. I am more than willing to contribute whatever 
I can to the maintenance of a Cooperative Psycho- 
logical Investigation Society which shall stand ready 
to take up the investigation of any phenomena which 
promise to yield data of psychological interest ; which 
shall, however, keep far removed from any phase of 
the transcendental or the occult ; which shall not feel 
itself under any obligation to disprove any improbable 
or absurd hypothesis which this or that seeker for 
notoriety may choose to put forward ; which shall not 
be dominated merely by the spirit of finding out whether 
there is "anything in" one movement or another, but 
will simply stand ready to supplement the work of the 
academic laboratories by undertaking, in the same 
spirit, a special form of investigation, which, under 
existing circumstances, such laboratories or their indi- 
vidual directors cannot expediently undertake. 

The anthropological interest, above referred to, is to 
my mind a most valid one, and is best represented in 
Mr. Andrew Lang's volume, " Cock Lane and Common 
Sense." Mr. Lang there examines the stories of ghosts 
and apparitions, and clairvoyance, and spiritual knocks 
and raps, and strange influences, and haunted places, 
not at all for determining how little or how much these 
things are true, but how they come to be believed in. 
How is it that the same tale is told, the same powers 
credited, the same manifestations produced, in evidence 
of the supernatural ? In savage as well as in ancient 
magic, in the stories current in former centuries as 
well as in our own day and generation, there is a pro- 



66 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

nounced generic similarity. There is certainly as strong 
an interest in the investigation of the growth and 
distribution of these beliefs as of the other clusters 
of belief which anthropology and folk-lore consider. 
And, moreover, recently acquired knowledge of hjp- 
notic and automatic phenomena, of hypersesthesia and 
nervous disease, shed much light on the obscure tales 
of the past, and assist the comprehension of how such 
beliefs could have originated. In brief, Mr. Lang 
outlines the programme for a " Comparative Psychical 
Research," and tells us that " we foUow the stream of 
fable, as we track a burn to its head, and it leads us 
into shy and strange scenes of human life, haunted by 
very fearful wild fowl, and rarely visited, save by the 
credulous. There may be entertainment here, and, to 
the student of his species, there may be instruction." 
Part of the instruction will consist in gaining an in- 
creased familiarity with the psychological conditions 
which produce and foster these narratives and beliefs, 
and with their social and traditional significance; in 
concluding, with Mr. Lang, "that the psychological 
conditions which begat the ancient narratives produce 
the new legends." 

IV 

Thus far, our attention has been centred upon the 
tendenz, the basis of interest, and the affiliations of 
Psychical Research. It will be well to turn to a con- 
sideration of the content of the problems. Liasmuch 
as the term represents a convenient but arbitrary 
designation of a heterogeneous group of phenomena, 
we are prepared to find that the data of the several 

/ 



THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 67 

problems thus collected will be as diverse as their 
methods of study. We may begin with the group of 
problems which might properly be considered in the 
chapter of Abnormal Psychology that is devoted to 
the milder forms of aberrant or unusual mental phe- 
nomena. The study of hypnotism occupies a prominent 
place in Psychology and in Psychical Research. The 
remarkable exhibitions of extreme suggestibility, par- 
ticularly the hyperaesthesia thus inducible, and again 
the illumination of the subconscious thereby effected, 
have brought about a realizing sense of how fearfully 
and wonderfully we are made. Between savage priest 
and doctor, and Delphic oracle, and mediaeval ascetic, 
and magnetic somnambule, and inspirational medium, 
there is an irregular connection in their entrance into 
a trance-like condition involving a readjustment of the 
strata of consciousness and of the distribution of 
authority in the hierarchy of the nervous centres. This 
was and remains one of the gateways to the land of 
marvel and mystery. The importance of hypnotism in 
Psychology is in its use, both as a method of exhibit- 
ing the relations of processes not otherwise accessible 
to experiment, and as a demonstration of the actual 
possibilities of suggestion in health and disease. The 
hypnotic phenomena are intrinsically interesting and 
valuable as contributions to the natural history of 
mentality ; the hypnotic method of study offers the 
experimental psychologist the opportunity to apply his 
most potent aid to research in precisely that field of 
inquiry in which the experimental methods of ordinary 
consciousness are least available. 

In this domain, the psychologist and the " psychical 



68 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

researcher " proceed most amicably ; and yet their pur- 
poses and points of view lead them frequently to part 
company, although it may be only for a brief au 
revoir. When the " psychical researcher " leaves the 
main highway to track a possible " telepathic," hyp- 
notic subject, or one who, while hypnotized, is sensi- 
tive to the magnetic current, or who experiences the 
characteristic effects of drugs applied in sealed vials to 
the back of the neck, or who falls into the hypnotic 
condition when handling a " magnetized " doll, — the 
psychologist is apt to decline the invitation to join in 
the pursuit. I should advise him, however, to go along 
for the sake of the excellent illustrations thus obtain- 
able of the effects of unconscious suggestion. From 
the time of the first serious investigation of these 
phenomena up to the present, unconscious suggestion 
has been one of the most potent influences for the pro- 
duction of alleged marvels and pseudo-phenomena. 
All the series of experiments brought forward at 
irregular intervals during the past century to estab- 
lish supernormal sensibilities have depended for their 
apparent success (apart from trickery) upon uncon- 
scious suggestion of the operators, combined with the 
shrewd assimilation of the desired or expected result 
on the part of the subjects. The transposition of the 
senses discovered by Petetin (1787), the hypnotized 
subjects who in Braid's day (1850) proved the loca- 
tion of the phrenological organs by the appropriateness 
of their actions when certain portions of the head 
were pressed, the sensitiveness to magnets and hermet- 
ically sealed drugs by Keichenbach (1845), and later 
by Bourru and Burot (1885), and Dr. Luys's (1890) 

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THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 69 

absurd trifling witli puppets, and probably, too, Char- 
cot's sharp differentiation of distinct hypnotic con- 
ditions (1882), — one and all furnish illustrations of 
the subtle possibilities of unconscious suggestion. Be- 
sides adorning an interesting psychological tale, they 
point a moral to the intending investigator, and open 
his eyes to the extreme caution necessary to exclude 
this source of error, and to realize the ever-present 
possibility that, in spite of the sterilizing apparatus and 
the other equipments of modern research, the germs of 
this insidious form of delusion may have been unwit- 
tingly introduced. 

The application of our knowledge of hypnotism to 
the explanation of alleged supernormal and unusual 
sensibilities is particularly interesting to the '' psy- 
chical researcher " ; the general enlargement of our 
knowledge of these conditions, irrespective of such an 
application, represents the aim of the psychologist. The 
latter may indeed cite Mr. Lang's dictum that " science 
is only concerned with truth, not with the mischievous 
inferences which people may draw from truth," as an 
excuse for his own declination to cooperate in the 
correction of such mischievous inferences. But the 
civic conscience of the psychologist may convince him 
that the removal of error is often an indispensable re- 
quisite to the dissemination of truth. 

The study of the subconscious or the subliminal con- 
sciousness, of multiple personality, of mental automa- 
tisms, of involuntary actions, of induced visualizations, 
of sporadic hallucinations, may be cited as further 
illustrations of topics interesting to the " psychical 
researcher " for their bearings upon the apparent tran- 



70 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

scendence of the normal, and to the psychologist for 
illustrations of important groups of mental processes 
and relations. I must refer to the general literature 
for descriptions of these several phenomena ; the subtle 
connection between one hypnotic condition and the 
next, bridging over a period of normal consciousness 
with complete forge tfulness of the hypnotic conscious- 
ness ; the still more subtle evidence for the latency of 
impressions thus revivable by an appeal to the sub- 
conscious ; the elaboration, in trance experiences, of 
these nether world phenomena into organized person- 
alities, which in the remarkable case reported by Pro- 
fessor Flournoy expanded from a personification of 
Marie Antoinette to that of a Martian revisiting Mars, 
describing Martian scenery and ci^stoms, and writing 
in Martian language, and again to the reincarnation 
of a Hindu princess of four centuries ago ; the affilia- 
tion of these cases to those of spontaneous loss of 
personality in actual life, like that of the JKev. Ansel 
Bourne, related by Professor James ; the automatic 
writings performed by hypnotic subjects and by persons 
in normal conditions ; the power to induce visions by 
" crystal gazing," and auditory hallucinations by 
" shell-hearing " ; the census of hallucinations, together 
with the very important series of observations relative 
to the psychology of deception, — these represent the 
more truly psychological contributions of psychologists 
and "psychical researchers" to their common domain. 
The place which the explanation of spiritualistic 
and theosophic manifestations occupies in Psychical 
Research has already been noted ; that of ghosts and 
rappings and "haunted houses and poltergeists is quite 

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THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 71 

similar. Not wholly yet measurably different is the 
status of the study of hallucinations, presentiments, 
and previsions or premonitions. In this entire group 
of phenomena, the interests of Psychology and of 
Psychical Research are in the main distinct. This 
is readily illustrated with reference to the study of 
hallucinations. These are interesting to the psycholo- 
gist quite in the same sense as any other natural pro- 
duct of psycho-physiological action ; the prevalence of 
hallucinations under fairly normal conditions presents 
one out of a large number of interesting details, and 
forms a proper investigation for the Society for Psy- 
chical Research. Their census of hallucinations hardly 
bears out the conclusions which have been drawn 
therefrom, but contains much interesting information. 
When, however, the emphasis of the investigation is 
placed upon " veridical " hallucinations, and the es- 
tablishment of the conclusion that so many more of 
these hallucinations and presentiments " come true," 
or have a mysterious significance, than chance would 
allow, then the psychological interest is quite obscured 
by an interest of a totally different character. A 
"veridical" hallucination has little psychological per- 
tinence ; for it is equally interesting psychologically 
whether it happens to come true or not. The bearing 
of the hallucination upon or its origin in some of the 
occupations of normal waking life ; the possibility of 
its interpretation as a peculiar retroactive illusion of 
memory, as Professor Royce has suggested for some 
cases ; its significance as an unconscious perception of 
the shadow already present, not yet visible to con- 
sciousness, but coming before the event, — such are 



72 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

significant characteristics of hallucinations. The results 
of the study of hallucinations may likewise be applied 
to a determination of their relation to the sum total 
of the sequences of consciousness that constitute our 
mental life ; but there is only a most incidental psy- 
chological interest in the apparently personally signifi- 
cant or " veridical " aspect of the phenomena. And 
furthermore, whether they are truly " veridical " or 
only seemingly so ; whether, in other words, there is 
evidence enough in quality and quantity to make it a 
proper scientific inquiry as to the existence of a cause- 
and-effect-like relation between presentiment and issue, 
— this is a logical inquiry, although one which, along 
with other factors, includes psychological considerations. 
We here naturally approach what has, on the whole, 
formed the most conspicuous problem of Psychical 
Research — that associated with the term " telepathy." 
It will contribute to clearness of distinction to con- 
sider separately the question, whether the evidence 
accumulated in any wise justifies the conclusion, that 
there exists a form of communication occasionally 
going on between mind and mind apart from the recog- 
nized channels of sensation. This, too, is a strictly 
logical question, and is so presented in the following 
essay. We are here concerned with the status of 
telepathy in its relation to Psychology and Psychi- 
cal Research ; this it is possible to indicate briefly. 
First, if there really exist this extra-normal, fitful and 
occasional, uncertain and sporadic form of communi- 
cation, and if it can be conceived of in psychological 
terms, it forms an interesting, possibly even a momen- 
tous contribution to our knowledge of mental processes. 

/ 



THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 73 

In the present status of the alleged conditions of 
operations of telepathy, it will hardly modify seriously 
the direction or scope of the development of Psy- 
chology. It being unnecessary to cross bridges before 
coming to them, it may be sufficient to observe that up 
to the present there exists no decided prospect either 
of the demonstration of the reality of this process or 
of its psychological formulation ; and far less either of 
its inclusion within the science of Psychology, or of 
its practical utilization. When the day comes when 
the incontestable establishment of telepathy, as indeed 
of any totally novel contribution to Psychology, shall 
require a revision of psychological principles. Psy- 
chology will certainly have to be revised. What, then, 
many wiU retort, can be more important for the psy- 
chologist than to devote himself to the investigation 
of telepathy, to decide whether his Psychology needs 
reconstruction or not ? The answer is near at hand : 
there is no obligation upon any science to reconstruct 
its basal principles whenever it is suggested that these 
are incorrect or inadequate. It is not the suggestion 
of their inadequacy that is significant, but the concrete 
facts and evidence available to prove their inadequacy. 
If a new view can establish itself by its logical cogency 
and displace an accepted doctrine, if new facts, ade- 
quately established, make necessary a revision of 
current generalizations, no scientist and no science will 
protest. The present status of telepathy is simply not 
a formidable candidate for this distinction. 

That the evidence brought forward in proof of tele- 
pathy, similarly to that adduced for " veridical halluci- 
nations," is capable of psychological interpretation, and 



74 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

also contains interesting illustrations of obscure and 
subtle mental processes, becomes evident to the discern- 
ing student, and merits an extended demonstration. It 
is in the pursuit of such a demonstration that the psy- 
chologist turns to the records of " phantasms of the 
living," and of experimental thought-transference, 
thereby adding to an already significant and extensive 
collection of material illustrative of the influences of 
the undercurrents of thought-processes. Yet it is by 
no means urged that this is the only phase of utility 
which the study of telepathy holds out. That any one 
who is convinced of his ability to demonstrate telepathy 
is free to follow his conviction, will not be disputed ; 
that in the course of his investigations he may succeed 
in revealing the presence of unrecognized forms of 
mental action, it would be mere dogmatism to deny. 
Two things, however, should be clearly understood ; 
the first, that his data cannot claim serious attention 
before they are strong in their validity, and extensive 
in their scope, and consistently significant in their 
structure ; then, and not before, are they ready for 
the crucible of scientific logic, from which they may or 
may not emerge as standard metal, to be stamped and 
circulated as accepted coin of the realm. The second 
point relates to the status of the obligation to disprove 
the telepathic position. This is more often a question 
of expediency than of right. If the obligation can 
readily be discharged, it is usually desirable to do so, 
for the reason that the removal of actual error and mis- 
conception is often one of the methods of advancing 
science ; but there is no burden of disproof resting 
upon the scientist. 

/ 



THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 75 

V 

That the proceedings of the Society for Psychical 
Research contain valuable material in creditable quan- 
tity is evident to any unprejudiced reader ; in many 
ways they are neither so bad nor so good as they are 
painted to be. That " psychical researchers," though 
pursuing their labors with different motives, have in one 
direction and another contributed to the advance of 
Psychology, I have attempted to make clear. Further- 
more, the activity of this Society has been prominent in 
making the borderland of science of to-day present a 
far more hopeful aspect than ever before. It has sub- 
stituted definiteness of statement, careful examination, 
recognition of sources of error, close adherence to as 
carefully authenticated fact as is attainable, for loose 
and extravagant speculation, for bare assertion and ob- 
scuring irrelevancy. It has made possible a scientific 
statement and a definiteness of conception of problems, 
even where its proposed solution of them may be thought 
misleading or inadequate. But in my opinion the debit 
side of the ledger far outbalances the credit side. The 
influence which Psychical Research has cast in favor 
of the occult, the enrollment under a common protect- 
ive authority of the credulous and the superstitious, 
and the believers in mystery and in the personal signifi- 
cance of things, is but one of the evils which must be 
laid at its door. Equally pernicious is the distorted 
conception, which the prominence of Psychical Re- 
search has scattered broadcast, of the purposes and 
methods of Psychology. The status of that science has 
suffered, its representatives have been misunderstood, 



76 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

its advancement has been hampered, its appreciation by 
the public at large has been weakened and wrongly es- 
timated, by reason of the popularity of the unfortunate 
aspects of Psychical Research, and of its confusion 
with them. Whatever in the publications of Psychical 
Research seems to favor mystery and to substantiate 
supernormal powers is readily absorbed, and its bearings 
fancifully interpreted and exaggerated ; the more criti- 
cal and successfully explanatory papers meet with a less 
extended and less sensational reception. Unless most 
wisely directed Psychical Research is likely, by not 
letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing, 
to foster the undesirable propensities of human nature 
as rapidly as it antagonizes them. Like indiscriminate 
almsgiving, it has the possibilities of affording relief 
and of making paupers at the same time. Particularly 
by the unwarranted acceptance of telepathy as a reality 
or as a working hypothesis, and the still more unwar- 
ranted use of this highly hypothetical process as a 
means of explaining more complex and obscure pheno- 
mena, has it defeated one of the most important pur- 
poses which it might have served. 

The popular as well as the more critical acceptance 
of Psychical Research, both of the term and of the 
conceptions associated with it, has disseminated a 
totally false estimate on the part of the public at large 
of the scope and purposes of modern Psychology ; and 
has quite possibly given an unfortunate twist to the 
trend of recent psychological thought. The right ap- 
preciation of scientific aims and ideals by the intelligent 
and influential public has come to be almost indispensa- 
ble to the favorable advancement of science. Psychology 



THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 77 

can less afford than many another science to dispense 
with this helpful influence ; and no science can remain 
unaffected by persistent misinterpretation of its true 
end and aims. If Psychical Research is to con- 
tinue in its present temper, it becomes essential to have 
it clearly understood just how far its purposes and spirit 
are, and how much farther they are not, in accord with 
the purposes and the spirit of Psychology. The opti- 
mistic psychologist anticipates the day when he will no 
longer be regarded, either in high life or in low life, as 
a collector of ghost stories or an investigator of mediums. 
The disuse of the unfortunate term " Psychical Re- 
search," and far more, the modification of the concep- 
tions animating this type of investigation, the pursuit 
of its more intrinsically psychological problems in a 
more truly psychological spirit, and perhaps, most of 
all, the disassociation of the term " Psychology " from 
the undesirable and irrelevant connotations of Psychical 
Research, are all consummations devoutly to be de- . 
sired. 



THE LOGIC OF MENTAL TELEGKAPHY 

What will be pronounced strange or curious is 
largely determined by the range and composition of 
the common body of knowledge to whose laws and uni- 
formities the phenomena in question apparently fail to 
conform. What is passing strange to one generation 
may become easily intelligible to the next. We all 
have eyes that see not for all but a limited range of 
facts and views ; and we unconsciously fill out the 
blind-spots of our mental retinae according to the 
habits and acquisitions of the surrounding areas. We 
observe and record what interests us ; and this interest 
is in turn the outcome of a greater or lesser endow- 
ment, knowledge, and training. A new observation re- 
quires, as a rule, not a new sense-organ or an additional 
faculty, nor even more powerful or novel apparatus, 
but an insight into the significance of quite lowly 
and frequent things. Most of the appearances of the 
earth's crust, which the modern geologist so intelli- 
gently describes, were just as patent centuries ago as 
now ; what we have added is the body of knowledge 
that makes men look for such facts and gives them a 
meaning. And although " the heir of all the ages," 
we can hardly presume to have investigated more than 
a modest portion of our potential inheritance ; future 



THE LOGIC OF MENTAL TELEGRAPHY 79 

generations will doubtless acquire interests and points 
of view which will enable them to fill some of the many- 
gaps in our knowledge, to find a meaning in what we 
perchance ignore or regard as trivial, and to reduce to 
order and consistency what to us seems strange or 
curious or unintelligible. And future generations, by 
virtue of a broader perspective and a deeper insight, 
may give little heed to what we look upon as signifi- 
cant, — much as we pronounce irrelevant and supersti- 
tious the minute observances whereby primitive folk 
strive to attract the good fortunes and to avoid the 
dangers of human existence. 



The possibility of the transference of thought, apart 
from the recognized channels of sensation, has been too 
frequently discussed, with the suppressed or unconscious 
assumption that our knowledge of the means whereby 
we ordinarily and normally, consciously and uncon- 
sciously, convey to others some notion of what is pass- 
ing in our own minds, is comprehensive and exhaustive. 
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Whenever a 
mode of perception, no matter how limited or appar- 
ently trivial, has been thoroughly investigated, there 
have been discovered, or at least suggested, unrecog- 
nized possibilities of its use and development. And 
no result of experimental inquiry is more constantly 
illustrated than the extent to which inferences from 
sensations and the exercise of faculties may proceed 
without arousing consciousness of their existence. 
Many color-blind persons remain quite ignorant of 
their defect ; and it was only after the description of 



80 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

his own notable deficiencies by Dalton (in 1794) that 
the general prevalence of color-blindness became recog- 
nized. The fact that a portion of every one's retina 
is as blind as his finger-tip escaped observation until 
about two centuries ago ; and this because the normal 
use of our eyes does not present the conditions of its 
easy detection; and for a like reason we persistently 
refuse to see the double images that are constantly 
formed upon our retinae. With the same unconscious- 
ness that we receive sensations and draw inferences 
from them, do we give to others indications of what is 
going on in our minds, and read between their words 
and under ^ their expressions what " half reveals and 
half conceals the thoughts that lie within." It is im- 
portant to emphasize the serious limitations as yet 
attaching to our knowledge of the detailed possibilities 
of normal perception and inference, in order to realize 
the corresponding hesitancy with which we should 
regard any series of facts, no matter how apparently 
inexplicable, as evidence of a supernormal kind of 
mental telegraphy. 

A further principle important in this connection, 
and one which is likewise borne out by experimental 
inquiry, is the general similarity in our mental ma- 
chinery in matters great and small, and the resulting 
frequency with which similar trains of thought may 
be carried on by different persons as the outcome of 
similar but independent brain-functioning. There is a 
natural tendency to exaggerate the individuality of our 
own ways of thought and expression ; and yet but little 
reflection is necessary to suggest how easily this fond 
belief may be at least partially delusive. In certain 



THE LOGIC OF MENTAL TELEGRAPHY 81 

lines of thought, such as mathematics, we should regard 
it as strange if two thinkers, starting with the premises 
determined by the problem in hand, should not reach 
the same conclusion ; in others, such as economic or 
political questions, we observe the preponderance of 
evidence in one direction, and yet can appreciate the 
grounds of a contrary opinion ; and while in still other 
cases we regard the verdict as a matter of taste or of 
individual preference, it may be questioned whether 
this is so unmotived or lawless a process as is com- 
monly assumed. While we properly expect more 
mental community in certain lines than in others, 
we have good grounds for believing that it exists 
everywhere and only awaits the proper modes of inves- 
tigation to reveal it in its full extent and significance. 
With the marvelously increased facilities for the dis- 
semination and transportation of thought, the range of 
such mental community is certain to be correspondingly 
extended. Coincidences arising from the bringing to- 
gether of widely separated and apparently unrelated 
happenings are sure to multiply, when the means of 
bringing them together are so vastly increased. Each 
man's world is enlarged by the enlargement of the 
whole. It becomes possible for him to come into rela- 
tion with infinitely more persons and events, and the 
resulting coincidences are nowadays more likely to be 
noticed and recorded. 

If we consider the logical ease with which the 
successful solution of one portion of a problem sug- 
gests the next step ; how imperceptibly and yet effec- 
tively sentiments and points of view and the spirit of 
the time are disseminated; how many persons there 



82 . FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

are In this busily reflective era occupied with similar 
thoughts and schemes, and how readily they may come 
into communication; how many are anxiously study- 
ing the popular taste and demand to determine what 
literary venture or mechanical invention is likely to be 
timely and successful ; how the possession of a common 
Inheritance, patriotic Interests, education, literature, 
political arena, social usa,ges, newspaper intelligence, 
household conveniences, and the endless everyday fac- 
tors of our complex, richly detailed existence all con- 
tribute to our common life, — shall we wonder that 
some two or half a dozen Intellects should give expres- 
sion to similar thoughts at nearly the same time? 
Would It not be Infinitely more wonderful if such 
coincidences did not constantly occur? In the more 
original contributions to literature, science, and inven- 
tions, such thought-correspondences should be rarer; 
and certainly this Is true. Contrast the number of 
striking similarities in the higher walks of literature 
and science with those that occur In small inventions. 
Hardly a day passes without the coincidence of two 
persons thinking of devices for accomplishing the same 
purposes, so essentially similar that patents could not 
be given to both. It is certainly not difficult to under- 
stand why several different patterns of typewriting ma- 
chines should be invented nearly simultaneously, and it 
would not be altogether mysterious if, at the first, two 
inventors had independently reached the idea of a writ- 
ing-machine at nearly the same time. The experience 
of offering an article to an editor and receiving a reply 
to the effect that another article dealing with a sim- 
ilar topic in a similar way was already awaiting the 



THE LOGIC OF MENTAL TELEGRAPHY 83 

compositor is not unusual. It is true that these coinci- 
dences are of a minor order, but it seems desirable to 
emphasize the frequency of these minor forms in order 
to suggest the law-abiding character of the rarer or the 
more striking forms ; for this is just what the normal 
distribution of such phenomena would lead us to expect. 
It would be pleasant to believe that the application 
of the doctrine of chances to problems of this character 
is quite generally recognized ; but this recognition is 
so often accompanied by the feeling that the law very 
clearly applies to all cases but the one that happens to 
be under discussion, that I fear the belief is unwar- 
ranted. Moreover, the notion seems to prevail that 
these coincidences should occur with equal frequency 
to all persons ; while, in fact, the law of probability pro- 
vides for the most various distribution among individ- 
uals. However, the attempt, and it may be the sincere 
attempt, to apply proper conceptions of probability 
and improbability to such problems often fails, because 
of an unfortunate mental attitude which presents, with 
an outward acquiescence in the objective view of the 
problem, an inward conviction in which the subjective 
interpretation is really dominant ; for this and other 
reasons, this objective method of viewing the matter, 
however pertinent, is not the most important. 

II 

One of the most deplorable attitudes towards the 
borderland phenomena of which mental telegraphy or 
telepathy forms a type, is that which insists upon an 
exact and detailed explanation of concrete personal 
experiences, and regards these as so essentially peculiar 



84 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

that it refuses to consider tliem in connection with 
the many other instances of the same class, without 
reference to which a rational explanation is unattain- 
able. This tendency, to insist that the laws of sci- 
ence shall be precisely and in detail applicable to 
individual experiences possessing a personal interest 
for us, has wrought much havoc ; it has contributed to 
superstition, fostered pseudo-science, and encouraged 
charlatanism. To antagonize this tendency it is neces- 
sary to insist upon the statistical nature of the inquiry. 
We should certainly be familiar in this statistic-filled 
age with the law-abiding character of individual hap- 
penings when considered in large groups. So many 
types of facts depending upon individual and hetero- 
geneous motives shoot together and form curves of 
surprising regularity ; the number of marriages or of 
misdirected letters, the falsification of ages or the dis- 
tribution of heights of individuals, and countless other 
items that in individual cases seem accidental, or capri- 
cious, or due to a host of minute and unaccountable 
factors, none the less present a striking statistical 
.regularity. The owners of a gaming-table, counting 
upon the statistical regularity of the accidental, are 
assured of a steady income ; they are interested long 
enough to obtain an extensive view of the fluctuations, 
and to see the law that guides the whole. Not so the 
individual player ; he is interested only in that par- 
ticular portion of the game in which his money is at 
stake. He detects mysterious laws of fortune and 
freaks of luck ; sees in a series of coincidences or mo- 
mentary successes the proofs of his pet schemes, and 
dismisses the general doctrine of chances with disdain, 



THE LOGIC OF MENTAL TELEGRAPHY 85 

because it is not obviously applicable to his case. This 
influences the losers as well as the winners ; both are 
absorbed in their own minute portions of the game, 
and forget that the law makes distinct provision for 
temporary losses and gains, great and small, but is as 
indifferent to the times and order of such occurrences 
as to the personality of those affected. 

The distinction between the individual and the statis- 
tical aspect of a problem may be further illustrated in 
the much-discussed question of the differences in brain 
characteristics of men and women. When the claim- 
ants for woman's equality point to the acknowledged 
inability of an anatomist to determine whether a par- 
ticular brain belonged to a man or a woman as con- 
clusive evidence of their contention, they unconsciously 
assume that the problem is capable of determination in 
the individual specimen. A sounder logic would in- 
sure greater caution. The differences in question may 
be certainly established and typical, and yet depend 
upon statistical, not upon individual data. Give the 
anatomist a goodly number of fairly selected brains 
and tell him that all the women's brains are in one 
group, and all the men's brains in another, and he will 
tell you which group is feminine, which masculine ; 
and this more than offsets his failure in the former 
test. It establishes a statistical regularity. Individu- 
ally we may argue that many women of our acquaint- 
ance have larger heads than the men ; that the English 
are not taller than the French, because the Frenchmen 
we have chanced to meet have been quite as tall as the 
Englishmen of our acquaintance; that the laws of 
chance do not apply to the gaming-table, because on 



86 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

that basis we should have come out even and not as 
losers ; and that coincidences cannot explain our 
strange mental experiences, because they are altogether 
too peculiar and too frequent. It is only in the most 
complete stages and in the more definite realms that 
knowledge becomes applicable accurately and definitely 
to individual cases. For the present it is well if, with 
such abstruse or rather indefinite material, we can 
glimpse the statistical regularity of the entire group 
of phenomena, trace here and there the possible or 
probable application of general principles, and refuse 
to allow our opinions to be disarranged by rather 
startling individual cases. The explanation of these, 
however interesting they may be to ourselves or enter- 
taining to others, is not the test of our knowledge of 
the subject. 

I pick up a stone, and with a peculiar turn of the 
hand throw it from me ; probably no student of me- 
chanics can exactly calculate the course of that projec- 
tile, — nor is it worth while. What he can do is to show 
what laws are obeyed by ideal projectiles, ideally thrown 
under ideal conditions, and how far the more impor- 
tant practical cases tend to agree with or diverge from 
these conditions. It is unfair to test his science by 
its minute applicability to our special experiences. 

When the problems involved in mental telegraphy 
come to be generally viewed under the guidance of a 
sound logic, the outlook will be hopeful that the whole 
domain will gradually acquire definite order ; and that 
its devotees, after appreciating the statistical regularity 
of the phenomena, will come to the conclusion that 
much of the energy and ability now expended in a 



THE LOGIC OF MENTAL TELEGRAPHY 87 

search for the explanation of complex and necessarily 
indefinite individual cases, is on the whole unprofitable. 
With an infinite time and an infinite capacity it might 
be profitable to study all things ; but, at present, sanity 
consists in the maintenance of a proper perspective 
of the relative importance of the affairs of the intellec- 
tual and the practical life. It may be that the man who 
puzzles day and night over some trivial mystery expends 
as much brain energy as a great intellectual benefactor 
of mankind ; but the world does not equally cherish the 

two. 

Ill 

It becomes important in the further consideration of 
coincidences to emphasize the great opportunity pre- 
sented in their description for error, for defective ob- 
servation, for neglect of details, for exaggeration of the 
degree of correspondence ; and equally demonstrable is 
the slight amount of such error or mal-observation that 
is all-sufficient to convert a plain fact into a mystery. 
Consider the disfigurement that a simple tale undergoes 
as it passes from mouth to mouth ; the forgetfulness 
of important details and the introduction of imaginary 
ones, exhibited upon the witness stand ; the almost uni- 
versal tendency to substitute inferences from sensations 
and observations for the actual occurrences ; and add 
to these the striking results of experimental inquiry in 
this direction — for example, the divergences between 
the accounts of sleight-of-hand performances or spirit- 
ualistic seances and what really occurred — and it be- 
comes less difficult to understand why we so often fail to 
apply general principles to individual cases. The cases 
cannot be explained as they are recorded, because as 



88 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

recorded they do not furnish the essential points upon 
which the explanation hinges. The narrator may be 
confident that the points of the story are correctly ob- 
served, that all the details are given ; and yet this feel- 
ing of confidence is by no means to be trusted. It is 
quite possible that the points that would shed most 
light on the problem are too trivial to attract atten- 
tion ; a slightly imperfect connection as effectively 
breaks the circuit and cuts off the possibility of illumi- 
nation as a more serious disturbance. After the expla- 
nation is given or the gap supplied or the break dis- 
covered, we often wonder how we could have failed to 
detect the source of the mystery ; but before we know 
what to observe and what to record and what to be on 
our guard against, the possibility of error is extremely 
great, far greater than most of us would be willing to 
make allowance for ; and the strict demonstration as 
also the refutation of a proposed explanation becomes 
correspondingly difficult. 

IV 

I turn to another point, in some respects the most 
important of all ; I refer to the readiness with which 
we interpret as the remarkable frequency of coinci- 
dences what is due to a strong interest in a given direc- 
tion. Inasmuch as we observe what interests us, a 
recently acquired interest will lead to new observations 
— that is, new to us, however familiar they may be to 
others. Take up the study of almost any topic that 
appeals to human curiosity, and it takes no prophet to 
predict that within a short time some portion of your 
reading or your conversation, or some accidental iufor- 



THE LOGIC OF MENTAL TELEGRAPHY 89 

mation, will unexpectedly reveal a bearing on the pre- 
cise subject of your study, often supplying a gap which 
it would have been most difficult otherwise to fill ; but 
surely this does not mean that all the world has become 
telepathically aware of your needs and proceeded to 
attend to them. Some years ago I became interested in 
cases of extreme longevity, particularly of centenarian- 
ism, and for some months every conversation seemed to 
lead to this topic, and every magazine and newspaper 
offered some new item about old people. Nowadays my 
interest is transferred to other themes ; but the para- 
grapher continues quite creditably to meet my present 
wants, and the centenarians have vanished. When 
I am writing about coincidences, I become keen to ob- 
serve them ; such for example as this : I was reading 
for the second time an article on " Mental Telegraphy " 
(by Mark Twain in " Harper's Monthly Magazine," 
December, 1891) ; I was occupied with what is there 
described as a most wonderful coincidence, the nearly 
simultaneous origination by the author and by Mr. Wil- 
liam H. Wright of a similar literary venture, — when 
I happened to take my eyes from the page and saw on 
my desk a visiting-card bearing the name, " W. H. 
Wright." It was not the same W. H. Wright, but a 
gentleman whom I had met for the first time a few 
hours before, and have not seen since. Had I not been 
especially interested in this article and its subject, the 
identity of the names would certainly have escaped my 
attention, and there would have been no coincidence to 
record. Quite apropos both of coincidences and of 
their dependence upon personal interest, I find recorded 
in a current magazine the experience of one who 



90 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

became enthusiastically interested in thoroughbred 
cats : " Strangely enough — for it is a thing which is re- 
currently strange — I, who had rarely seen any printed 
matter relating to cats, now found the word in every 
newspaper. Adopting a new interest is like starting a 
snowball ; as long as it moves, it gathers other parti- 
cles to itself." 

It is only necessary to become deeply interested in 
coincidences, to look about with eyes open and eager 
to detect them, in order to discover them on all sides ; 
resolve to record all that come to hand, and they seem 
to multiply until you can regard yourself and your 
friends as providentially favored in this direction. If 
your calling develops a taste for matters of this kind, — 
for example, if you are a writer, with a keen sense for 
the literary possibilities and dramatic effects of such 
coincidences, or if you are of an imaginative turn of 
mind with a pronounced or a vague yearning for the 
interesting or the unusual ; if you have a more gener- 
ous or more persistent endowment of the day-dream- 
ing, fantastic, self-dramatization of adolescence, that 
is half unreal and yet half externalized in the vivid- 
ness of youthful fancy, — is it strange that you should 
meet with more of these " psychic experiences " than 
your prosaic neighbor whose thoughts and aspirations 
are turned to quite other channels, and to whom an 
account of your experiences might even prove tire- 
some ? If you cultivate the habit of having present- 
iments, and of regarding them as significant, is it 
strange that they should become more and more fre- 
quent, and that among the many, some should be 
vaguely suggestive, or even directly corroborative of 
actual occurrences ? 



THE LOGIC OF MENTAL TELEGRAPHY 91 

The frequent coincidences, whicli form so influential 
a factor in disseminating an inclination towards such 
an hypothesis as telepathy, are doubtless largely the 
result of an interest in these experiences. This inter- 
est is very natural and proper, and when estimated at 
its true value is certainly harmless ; it may indeed 
contribute material worthy of record for the student 
of mental phenomena, — or it may give spice to the 
matter-of-fact incidents of a workaday existence. To 
many minds, however, the temptation to magnify this 
interest into a significant portion of one's mental life, 
to invest it with a serious power to shape belief and 
to guide conduct, is unusually strong, in some cases 
almost irresistible. It is this tendency that is essen- 
tially antagonistic to a logical view and therefore to a 
scientific study of these irregular mental incidents ; it 
is this tendency that is responsible for much of the 
spurious and the unwholesome interest in the problems 
of mental telegraphy. 

It would naturally be expected that the nature and 
subject-matter of the more frequent types of coinci- 
dences and presentiments would throw some light upon 
their origin, and would in some measure reinforce the 
general position above taken. We should expect that 
such coincidences would relate to persons and affairs 
that are frequently in our thoughts, and that similari- 
ties of thought and presentiments based upon them 
should occur among persons intimately acquainted with 
one another's thought-habits, at least in regard to that 
line of thought to which the coincidence relates ; these 
expectations are fairly well borne out by the facts. It 
is a commonplace observation that presentiments and 



92 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

unusual psychic experiences most frequently relate 
to those who are dear to us, or in whom we have a 
momentarily strong interest ; that they deal with events 
which we have anxiously dreaded or desired, or with 
matters over which we have puzzled or worried ; and 
again, that they occur under conditions of emotional 
strain, excitement, or anxiety. In brief, they deal with 
what is frequently in our minds or what more or less 
unconsciously furnishes the general emotional and in- 
tellectual background which gives character to our 
mood and to our associations of ideas. I need hardly 
add that it is the more successful and striking coinci- 
dences that we remember and record, and the others 
that are quickly forgotten. Moreover, so large a share 
of mental operations of the type in question takes place 
in the region of the subconscious, that our recollection 
of what has occupied our thoughts is by no means a 
final authority. Occasionally we detect these subcon- 
scious similarities of mental operations, when after a 
silence the same question or thought shapes itself on 
the lips of two speakers at the same time ; and here 
again, are not many of those who give utterance to the 
same thoughts, or finish one another's sentences, inti- 
mate companions in the walks of life? Is it strange 
that in the daily intercourse with a congenial spirit, they 
should have absorbed enough of one another's mental 
processes to anticipate, now and then, a step in their 
association of ideas ? 

Still another factor that figures somewhat in coinci- 
dences relates to events which are sooner or later very 
likely or quite certain to occur, and in which the coin- 
cidence is confined to the close simultaneity of the 



THE LOGIC OF MENTAL TELEGRAPHY 93 

action on the part of two or more persons concerned. 
The crossing of letters is easily the best illustration of 
this type of occurrence which has the semblance of 
thought-communication. It is so easy to fall into the 
habit of delaying all delayable matters as long as possi- 
ble that it must frequently happen that your own sense 
of duty is aroused and your correspondent's patience is 
exhausted at nearl}?^ the same time. If A is to hear 
from B, or B from A, within a period not very definite 
but still reasonably limited, every day's delay makes it 
more and more probable that their letters will cross. 
The same consideration applies to other affairs of daily 
life ; we delay a matter of business and are just about 
to attend to it when the other party concerned comes 
to us, or we delay offering some social attention until 
just as we are about to do so it is asked of us ; and 
so on. In brief, we find not only in sickness and 
death, in family ties and friendships, in travel and ad- 
venture, but also in the special and in the complicated 
interests of our civilized life an abundant opportunity 
for coincidences ; and we find that their frequency 
is clearly related to the commonness of the event, 
and to its familiarity and closeness of relation to our 
habits of thought. 



Reviewing the arguments which have been presented, 
we find a tendency to underestimate the possibilities 
of expression and communication through the normal 
channels of the senses and the subtle inferences based 
upon them, and also an insufficient appreciation of the 
unrecognized but by no means supernormal capabilities, 



94 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

which special and unusual susceptibility or training of 
these same powers of interpretation and thought-revela- 
tion may bring about ; we find, further, a prevalent 
underestimation of the generic and at times the specific 
similarity of the products of our several diverse and yet 
homogeneous mental equipments, and with it a lack of 
consideration of the greatly increased facilities for such 
mental community afforded by modern conditions of 
rapid transit and rapid sharing of the common benefits 
of civilization. We find a misconception of the nature 
of the application of the doctrine of chances to mental 
coincidences, which brings about an apparent recognition 
but an intrinsic belittling of the role which chance 
really plays in the evidence advanced for telepathy ; 
we find that this error is probably due to an unfortu- 
nate, intensely individual view of the problem, which 
insists upon an explanation of personal experiences, and 
disregards the essentially impersonal and statistical 
nature of the inquiry. This unfair attitude (which is 
equally unfair if applied to other and more exact data) 
renders difficult, if not impossible, a just appreciation 
of the theoretical aspect of the problem and of the 
application of theory to practice. We find, furthermore, 
that the recorded data are likely to involve an unusual 
degree of unreliability owing to such natural psycho- 
logical tendencies as defective observation, exaggeration, 
preconception, and the ordinary limitations and failings 
of humanity ; nor is any serious amount of such neglect 
needed to bridge the gap between intelligible fact and 
unintelligible mystery. Finally, it is not sufficiently 
borne in mind that the data are in large part created 
by the subjective attitude of expectation and interest 



THE LOGIC OF MENTAL TELEGRAPHY 95 

in such experiences, and that the nature of the more 
frequent coincidences furnishes satisfactory evidence of 
their natural relations to dominant interests and occu- 
pations. The concordant suggestion from these vari- 
ous considerations is that a very large part of the expe- 
riences offered in evidence of mental telegraphy, finds a 
much more natural and more consistent explanation 
when viewed as the complex and irregular results of 
types of mental processes included within the legitimate 
and recognized domain of psychology. There is no 
desire to overlook the loose and distant connection that 
often pertains between the general considerations and 
the particular phenomena here relevant ; on the con- 
trary, this lack of explicit and intimate connection is a 
logical characteristic of the relation of theory to prac- 
tice in dealing with such complex and irregular mate- 
rial, and is likely for a long time to remain so. A 
more properly cultivated logical sense will bring about 
a more satisfactory appreciation of and a greater intel- 
lectual content with this aspect of the problem ; it will 
be recognized that it is wiser to make the best of actual 
though admittedly unsatisfactory conditions than to fly 
to evils that we know not of. 

VI 

I therefore regard the inclination towards a telepathic 
hypothesis as the result of a defective logical attitude, 
which in turn may be regarded as the outcome of a 
natural but unfortunate psychological tendency. In 
considering the question, " What is the proper inference 
to be drawn from the accumulated data apparently 
suggestive of ' communication between mind and mind 



96 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

otherwise than through the known channels of the 
senses ' ? " we are considering a logical problem — a 
problem of considerable difficulty, not one to be entered 
upon without deliberation and preparation. In con- 
sidering the question, " How is it that such evidence is 
readily accepted as proof of telepathy ? How is it that 
this hypothesis is favored above others intrinsically no 
less improbable ? " we are likewise entering upon a 
complex problem, but one that is psychological in scope 
and nature. It is to a more fundamental consideration 
of these questions that we now turn. 

I have based my discussion of mental telegraphy 
almost wholly upon the occurrence of coincidences 
(using that term not as the equivalent wholly of chance 
occurrences, but including suggestive or interesting 
conjunctions of circumstances in general), for the reason 
that coincidences — both those of a commonplace char- 
acter and those that seem to possess a striking personal 
significance — have prepared the popular mind for the 
acceptance of the telepathic hypothesis, and still con- 
stitute the most formidable array of evidence presented 
for that hypothesis. The other class of evidence to be 
considered is the experimental, which may be said to 
include as its most distinctive type the results of tests 
in which intentional attempts at mental telegraphy were 
made under definite conditions and usually with spe- 
cially selected subjects ; and as another type, the pre- 
cise verification and registration of presentiments and 
peculiar and startling " psychic experiences " with re- 
ference to their coincidence with death, accidents, and 
other serious events in life. It may be admitted that 
the experimental data are equally worthy with the 



THE LOGIC OF MENTAL TELEGRAPHY 97 

others of a logical analysis, and indeed that they pre- 
sent in some respects different and more favorable ^con- 
ditions for the application of such an analysis. In 
general, however (and I desire to confine this discussion 
to the general principles involved and not to the analy- 
sis of special cases), the considerations that determine 
the logical value, or the lack of it, of the one type of 
evidence are applicable without undue modification to 
the other. Nor do I consider that the experimental data 
have seriously modified the logical status of the problem 
as a whole ; nor that they have, except in relatively few 
cases, been of themselves sufficient to make converts to 
a belief in telepathy. They have undoubtedly very 
much strengthened and disseminated that belief ; but 
this implies that a favorable disposition to the belief 
was already present. It is because it seems to me that 
the presence of this favorable disposition, albeit in 
suppressed or half -acknowledged form, is in most cases 
due to some phase of the argument from coincidences, 
that I have made it central in my discussion. I must 
not fail to point out, however, that experiments in 
thought-transference have one important, and that a 
logical, advantage over observations of coincidences ; 
this is the possibility which they present of quite accu- 
rately allowing for the effect of chance. In coinci- 
dences the estimate of chance as the source of the con- 
junction of events is frequently, if not always, a matter 
of complex judgment over which serious differences of 
opinion will occur. Some of the published quantitative 
estimates made by serious and able students of such 
problems, of the probabilities that certain coincidences 
have been due to chance have been pronounced alto- 



98 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

gether wide of the mark and even absurd by others. 
In experiments arranged with due precautions there 
can be no uncertainty on this point ; the proportion 
of successes, that is, of striking coincidences, may be 
calculated. If the actual number of chance coinci- 
dences appreciably exceeds the calculated propor- 
tion, and if the theory on which the calculation was 
based corresponds to the actual conditions, then the 
results were not due to chance alone. But whether 
they were due to fraud, or to some unconscious trans- 
ference of indications, or to telepathy, or to spirit influ- 
ence, or to interference of the devil, or to the fact that 
the participants in the experiment were born when the 
stars and planets presented certain conjunctions, or to 
the existence of a totally unrecognized form of mental 
vibrations, — all these are mere hypotheses which may 
be strong or weak or absurd, according to their power 
to really account for the results, to their concordance 
with the sum total of scientific knowledge in this field 
and with the logical principles guiding the formation 
of scientific hypotheses. To jump from the conclusion 
that the results are not due to chance to the conclusion 
that they are due to telepathy, is no whit more absurd 
than the position of the astrologer, or the spiritualistic 
explanation of conjuring tricks. That there is some- 
thing in these results to be explained is admitted ; 
whether the results have been obtained and recorded 
in such a way as to contain the clue to their explana- 
tion cannot be affirmed ; whether our present state of 
knowledge enables us to explain them may be argued 
pro and con ; whether they are worth serious attention 
is also a debatable question ; but none of these condi- 



THE LOGIC OF MENTAL TELEGRAPHY 99 

tions warrants a resort to the telepathic hypothesis. 
That hypothesis as all others must be weighed in the 
logical balance without prepossession, and with full 
realization of the possibility, that " general appearances 
suspicious," or " not proven," or a complete suspen- 
sion of judgment, may be among the present verdicts. 

VII 

So far as the strength and weakness of the arguments 
for mental telegraphy depend upon the perspective of 
value attached to the various data and to the conditions 
under which these have been gathered, I have presented 
my estimate and indicated the burden of my conclu- 
sions. But I am aware that I may have laid myself 
open to the charge — which will be brought not by 
the advocates of telepathy, but by its most emphatic 
opponents — of a neglect of consideration of the gen- 
eral logical status of telepathy as a germane and 
legitimate hypothesis. That the hypothesis of tele- 
pathy when carefully interpreted is capable, if not of 
explaining the data, at least of being fitted without 
undue straining to a large portion of the data, may 
be claimed with some plausibility ; that I regard the 
hypothesis as unwarranted and unnecessary has been 
made sufficiently clear. But what if the hypothesis 
is not a legitimate one, not one which the methods and 
spirit of science can properly or profitably consider? 
If this be the case, it would seem superfluous to con- 
sider whether the hypothesis is warranted by the data 
or capable of explaining them. That it is the policy 
of science to allow the utmost latitude of opinion and 
theory and to interpret the possible in an unprejudiced 

UfC. 



100 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

and liberal spirit will readily be conceded. That it is 
equally the policy of science to demand of all claimants 
for recognition authentic credentials framed in accord- 
ance with the laws of logic and the principles of evidence 
and probability, is sometimes overlooked. Science can- 
not possibly consider all hypotheses, but only legitimate 
ones. To explain coincidences and the success of ex- 
periments in thought-transference by assuming that 
there is a demon, whose special business it is to make 
people have uncanny feelings when their relatives in 
distant places are dying or in danger, and to suggest 
to the guesser what is in the mind of the party of 
the second part in the experiment, is certainly not an 
hypothesis worthy of consideration by science ; and 
incidentally be it noted that this hypothesis may be 
successfully shaped to fit the facts, and cannot be 
definitely disproved. Some absurd hypotheses may 
be readily disproved and others not ; but are scientists 
really called upon to disprove them ? There recently 
fell under my observation a claim for the theory that 
when persons felt an unaccountable aversion for one 
another, either at once or after a time of friendship, it 
was due to their opposite horoscopic natures, and it 
would be found that their birthdays were not far 
from six months apart, that is, nearly as far apart as 
they possibly could be. Divorces, breaches of pro- 
mise, family feuds, and antipathies at first sight could 
thus be accounted for. Now, it would involve no 
very burdensome undertaking to disprove this theory ; 
but I should not expect a cordial approval of my 
efforts on the part of my colleagues if I carried 
through the investigation. The hypothesis is un- 



THE LOGIC OF MENTAL TELEGRAPHY 101 

scientific, or even anti-scientific, and its examination 
unnecessary and unprofitable. Yet it is not always 
possible to render so decisive a verdict; and in the 
present case, while I incline to the belief that the 
hypothesis of telepathy is, as usually advanced and in 
essence, an illegitimate one, I still regard it as possible 
that in the future some modification of this hypothesis 
may be framed, which will bring it within the scope of 
a liberal conception of the scientific. It is important 
to make this attitude perfectly clear : if telepathy 
means the hypothesis of a new force, that is, the as- 
sumption of an as yet uncomprehended mode of the 
output of energy, subject rigorously to the physical 
bonds of material causation which make possible a 
rational conception of psycho-physiological processes ; 
and if, further, some one will put forth a rational con- 
ception of how this assumed action can take place 
apart from the exercise of the senses, I am prepared 
to admit that this hypothesis is (not sound, or strong, or 
in accordance with the facts, or capable of explaining 
the facts, or warranted by the facts, but) one which it 
is legitimate, though perhaps not profitable, to consider. 
If, however, telepathy is put forward as a totally new 
and peculiar kind of action, which is quite unrelated 
to the ordinary forces with which our senses and scien- 
tific observation acquaint us, and which is not subject 
to the limitations of the material world of causation ; 
if telepathy is supposed to reveal to us a world beyond 
or behind or mysteriously intertwined with the pheno- 
mena of this world, — a world in which events happen 
not in accordance with the established physical laws, 
but for their personal significance even in defiance of 



102 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

those laws, — then it becomes impossible for the scien- 
tist to consider this hypothesis without abandoning his 
fundamental conceptions of law and science. 

My defense, therefore, for not beginning and possibly 
confining this discussion to the question of the scientific 
legitimacy of the telepathic hypothesis is that, in the 
present status of opinion, it does not seem to me hope- 
ful to influence belief by such a presentation. It 
seems to me a far more practical step to present the 
unwarranted character of the hypothesis and its logical 
insufficiencies as a means of influencing those who had 
been, or were likely to be, impressed by coincidences 
and death-warning experiences and guessing experi- 
ments. And, moreover, it is necessary, so long as 
such experiences have a strong hold on the popular 
imagination and shape the popular conceptions of the 
nature both of mental processes and of the field of 
psychology, to portray as well as may be the natural 
explanation and significance of the phenomena, and to 
indicate the general trend of the conceptions under 
which they may be profitably viewed ; and this, even 
though it be but measurably possible to apply general 
principles to special cases. This step is an essential 
part of the logical task here attempted. Under other 
circumstances it would have been advisable, as it always 
would be proper, to determine the legitimacy of an 
hypothesis before considering it as worthy of detailed 
examination on other counts. But here, as is frequently 
the case, it is a condition and not one of our own 
choosing that confronts us. 



THE LOGIC OF MENTAL TELEGRAPHY 103 

VIII 

What Is the logical conclusion to be drawn from the 
data offerable in evidence of some supersensory form 
of thought-transference, and whence the disposition to 
believe in the existence of such a procedure ? — these 
remain the central questions of the discussion. As to 
the former, I can say no more in dismissing the topic 
than that to me the phenomena represent a complex 
conglomerate, in which imperfectly recognized modes of 
sense-action, hypersesthia and hysteria, fraud, conscious 
and unconscious, chance, collusion, similarity of mental 
processes, an expectant interest in presentiments and a 
belief in their significance, nervousness and ill health, 
illusions of memory, hallucinations, suggestion, con- 
tagion, and other elements enter into the composition ; 
while defective observation, falsification of memory, 
forgetfulness of details, bias and prepossession, sugges- 
tion from others, lack of training and of a proper 
investigative temperament, further invalidate and con- 
fuse the records of what is supposed to have been 
observed. Many of the reported facts are not facts 
at all; others are too distortedly and too deficiently 
reported to be either intelligible or suggestive ; some 
are accurately observed and properly recorded, and 
these sometimes contain a probable suggestion of their 
natural explanation, sometimes must be put down as 
chance, and more often must be left unexplained. To 
call this absence of an explanation telepathy is surely no 
advance ; to pose this hypothetic process as the modus 
operandi of any result that can be even remotely and 
contingently otherwise accounted for seems superfluous ; 



104 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

to actually use this hypothesis to account for still more 
obscure and more indefinite and less clearly established 
phenomena is a most egregious logical sin. 

As to the natural tendency to believe in telepathy, 
it may be regarded as part of the anthropocentric and 
egocentric view of the universe and its happenings, 
and as an exemplification of the persistence of the 
mystical view of mundane events, — both of which are 
dominant in primitive philosophy, remain conspicuous 
wherever superstition still has a hold, flourish in 
pseudo-science and in esoteric cults, and will probably 
never become wholly obsolete. Mr. Clodd's remarks 
concerning the general notions underlying " sympa- 
thetic magic " may be applied to the bias in favor of 
the telepathic theory : " The general idea has only to 
be decked in another garb to fit the frame of mind 
which still reserves some pet sphere of nature for the 
operation of the special and the arbitrary." However 
difficult it may be to realize fully and in detail that 
the objective order of things is not arranged for our 
several personal benefits, that conclusion is inevitably 
forced upon us by a true insight into the inexorable 
logic of events, and harmonizes with the reflections of 
our more logical moods. Whatever tide there may be 
in human affairs is largely of our own making ; there 
is nothing to mark the flood except our own judgment 
and insight. We may select and arrange and adapt 
circumstances according to our needs, but the selection 
is made by us and not for us : " We must take the 
current when it serves." Some effort is necessary, 
some schooling must be gone through with, to enforce 
this attitude and to give it the practical effectiveness 



THE LOGIC OF MENTAL TELEGRAPHY 105 

of a living conviction. The attitude of conformity with 
current belief, the easy acceptance of the plausible, the 
avoidance of careful and questioning analysis, are far 
more inviting and less exacting than the regulation of 
belief by the logic of matured principles. The strenu- 
ous life has quite as important a mission in intellectual 
as in practical affairs. It will be a decided advance 
when it becomes generally acknowledged that the dis- 
cussion of such an hypothesis as telepathy presupposes 
an intimate acquaintance not merely with the facts 
concerned, but with the logical aspects of their inter- 
pretation ; that the probability of forming a sound 
opinion on such matters is measured not by the fervor 
of the interest in them, but by the intellectual requi- 
sites necessary to steer one's way among the intricacies 
and dangers of such an expedition. No persons are 
more deeply interested in the successful issue of a 
voyage than the passengers ; but this interest does not 
qualify them to form an intelligent opinion upon the 
proper direction of the machinery or the setting of the 
course, — much less does it fit them to take an active 
part in the actual navigation. Yet there are always 
those who confidently criticise the actions of captain and 
pilot, and are anxious to display their ability to form 
opinions of their own in regard to the intricate navi- 
gation over nature's highways. The most efficient anti- 
dote to the too ready inclination towards the popular or 
the superficial interpretation of the phenomena involved 
in mental telegraphy is doubtless the cultivation of the 
logical vigor and prudence so frequently referred to ; 
and next to this is an appreciation of the marvelous com- 
plexity and unfathomable subtlety of mental operations. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECEPTION 

The saying that appearances are deceptive is an 
inheritance from ancient times ; to Oriental and to 
Greek philosophers the illusory nature of the know- 
ledge furnished by the senses was a frequent and a fer- 
tile theme of contemplation and discussion. The same 
problem stands open to the psychologist of to-day ; but, 
profiting by the specialization of learning and the ad- 
vance of technical science, he can give it a more com- 
prehensive as well as a more practical answer. The 
physiological activities underlying sense-perception are 
now fairly well understood ; the experimental method 
has extended its domain over the field of mental phe- 
nomena; and in many ways have we become more 
expert in addressing our queries to the sphinx, Nature, 
so as to force a reply. To outline the position of 
modern psychology with reference to this interesting 
problem of deception is the object of the present essay. 



In a sense-impression we recognize a primitive ele- 
ment in the acquisition of knowledge. The depriva- 
tion of a sense even under most favorable circumstances 
leaves some traces of an incomplete mental develop- 
ment. This is due, not to the mere sense-impressions 
that the organ furnishes, but to the perception and co- 
ordination of these by inferential processes of a more 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECEPTION 107 

complex nature. It is not the eye of the eagle, but 
the brain directing the human eye, that leads to intel- 
lectual supremacy. Physiology recognizes this distinc- 
tion as one between lower and higher brain-centres. 
A man may have his retina or his optic nerve injured, 
and so be blind in the ordinary sense of the word. He 
is prevented from acquiring further knowledge by this 
avenue ; but, unless he become blind in early child- 
hood, he will retain a memory for visual images, will 
be able more or less clearly to imagine pictorially the 
appearances of objects from verbal descriptions, and in 
the free roamings of his dream fancy will live in a 
world in which blindness is unknown. On the other 
hand, there is a condition resulting from the disintegra- 
tion of certain portions of the finely organized cortex 
of the brain, in which the patient may retain full sight 
and understanding, but be unable to derive any mean- 
ing from what he sees. The same cluster of sensations 
that enables us to recognize a book, a picture, a face, 
and to arouse all the numerous associations attaching 
to these, is as unmeaning to him as the symbols of a 
cipher alphabet. This condition is termed "psychic 
blindness ; " and what is there lost is not the power of 
vision, but of interpreting, of assimilating, of reading 
the meaning of visual sense-impressions. It is this 
interpreting and assimilating process that is largely 
concerned in the formation of illusions. 

In the experiences of daily life we have to do not 
with simple sensations, but with more or less complex 
inferences from them ; and it is just because these in- 
ferences go on so constantly and so unconsciously that 
they are continually and persistently overlooked. It 



108 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

is an occasional experience in raising a water-pitcher 
to have the vessel fly up in the hand in a very startling 
manner, — the reason for this being that the pitcher, 
which one is accustomed to find well filled, happens to 
be empty. This experience shows that we uncon- 
sciously estimate the force necessary to raise the vessel, 
but only become conscious of this train of inference 
when it happens to lead to conclusions contradictory of 
the fact. The perception of distance, once thought to 
be as primitive a factor in cognition as the impression 
of a color, is likewise the result of complex though un- 
realized inferences ; and the phenomena of the stereo- 
scope, by imitating the conditions of the perception of 
solidity and thus making us see as solid the flat repre- 
sentations of a pair of diagrams in photographs, furnish 
a brilliant illustration of the variety and complexity of 
such unconscious reasonings. As for essential pur- 
poses normal persons have a common anatomy, a com- 
mon physiology, and a common psychology, it results 
that we draw these unconscious inferences after the 
same pattern ; and so completely are they the outcome 
of the normal reactions to our common environment, 
that we need not be, and as a rule are not, aware of 
their existence until — and probably with some little 
effort — our attention is directed to them. Uncon- 
sciously and spontaneously we learn to see, — that is, to 
extract meaning out of the sense-impressions that fall 
upon the retina. 

The simplest type of a deception occurs when an in- 
ference or an interpretation of this type, owing to an 
unusual disposition of external circumstances^ leads 
to a conclusion which other and presumably superior 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECEPTION 109 

testimony shows to be false. Thus, in the observation 
which Aristotle knew and described, that a pea or other 
round object held between two fingers crossed one over 
the other seems double, it is the unusual position of 
the fingers that induces the illusion. Under ordinary 
circumstances a sensation of contact on the left side of 
one finger and on the right side of the finger next to it 
(to the right) could only be produced by the simultane- 
ous application of two bodies. We unconsciously and 
naturally make the same inference when the fingers are 
crossed, and thus fall into error — an error, it is impor- 
tant to observe, which we do not outgrow but antago- 
nize by more convincing evidence. The pea held be- 
tween the crossed fingers continues to feel like two peas, 
but we are under no temptation to believe that there 
really are two peas. 

The limitations of our senses lead directly to the 
possibilities of their deception, which may in turn be 
realized inadvertently or utilized intentionally. We 
appreciate how defective is our localization of sound 
when we attempt to find a cricket by locating whence 
proceeds its chirp; the same difficulty lends uncer- 
tainty to the determination of the direction of fog-horn 
signals of passing steamers. This uncertainty coope- 
rates in the illusions of ventriloquism ; it is involved in 
the smack which one clown gives another, but which is 
reall}^ the clapping of the hands of the supposed victim ; 
it produces a realistic effect when a cannon is fired on 
the stage, for it is necessary only to show the flash 
while the noise is produced behind the scenes. Again, 
the stimulation of the retina is ordinarily due to the 
impinging upon it of light-waves emanating from an 



110 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

external object. Accordingly, when the retina is dis- 
turbed by any exceptional cause, such as a blow on the 
head or an electric shock to the optic nerve, we have a 
sensation of light projected outward into space. The 
perception of our own locomotion, which is likewise a 
highly inferential process, offers illustrations of casual 
illusion and of artificial deception. When on a train, 
it is by the passing-by before our eyes in the opposite 
direction of trees and posts and other features of the 
landscape, that we realize that we are moving forward ; 
accordingly, when a train alongside moves out before 
our own train has started, we have a distinct realiza- 
tion that we are moving backwards so long as we look 
at the forward-moving train. There is an illusion 
devised for amusement called the " Magic Swing," in 
which one is apparently swung to and fro with wider 
and wider excursions until a complete revolution is 
apparently made from a vertical to a horizontal, 
through the antipodal position, back to the horizontal 
and the normal. In reality, only a slight motion is 
imparted to the swing, but the inclosing walls, which 
are painted to represent a forest scene, are themselves 
revolved forward and then backward about the axis 
from which the swing is suspended. As, however, we 
have no experience with oscillating trees, we uncon- 
sciously infer the oscillations to be and feel them in our 
own persons. In another application of the same illu- 
sion we seem to be let down into the bowels of the 
earth ; but after a slight actual descent the car remains 
stationary while the illuminated sides of the shaft, 
which are suitably painted, are moved panorama-like 
in an upward direction. In brief, we are creatures of 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECEPTION 111 

the average ; we are adjusted for the most probable 
event ; our organism has acquired the habits impressed 
upon it by the most frequent experiences ; and this has 
induced an inherent logical necessity to interpret a 
new experience by the old, an unfamiliar by the famil- 
iar. In describing illusions of the above type, Mr. 
Sully aptly says that they " depend on the general 
mental law that when we have to do with the unfre- 
quent, the unimportant, and therefore unattended to, 
and the exceptional, we employ the ordinary, the famil- 
iar, and the well known as our standard." Illusion 
arises when the rule thus applied fails to hold; and 
whether or not we become cognizant of the illusion 
depends upon the ease with which the exceptional char- 
acter of the particular instance can be recognized, or 
the inference to which it leads be opposed by presum- 
ably more reliable evidence. 

II 

To make things seem more wonderful than they are, 
to possess knowledge and exhibit power beyond the 
ken of the multitude, has exercised a fascination upon 
the human mind in all its stages of development. The 
primitive conjuring of the ancient priest or of the 
savage medicine-man, the long tradition of Oriental 
legerdemain, and the stage performances of the mod- 
ern prestidigitateur are all connected with deep-seated 
human instincts. It has even been suggested ^ that 

1 By Norman Triplett, " The Psychology of Conjuring- Deceptions," 
American Journal of Psychology, xi. 4, July, 1900. This most recent 
and extensive treatment of this topic furnishes a well-selected store- 
house of fact, together with suggestive and able interpretations of the 



112 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

the mimicry and death-feigning instincts of animals, 
though essentially biological in type, are yet related 
to the psychological instincts of deception which make 
their first clear appearance in the higher animals 
and assume a distinctive position in the psychological 
equipment of childhood. The conjuring tricks or 
paradoxes which apparently contradict or rise supe- 
rior to ordinary experience, furnish the most various 
types of illustration of the psychology of deception. 
Whether presented as miracle by priest or by thau- 
maturgist or by expounder of the black art, or pre- 
sented as proof of spirit agency by the modern spirit- 
ualistic medium or his less pretentious predecessors, 
or by the stage performer for entertainment, the 
analysis of what was actually done, and the accounts 
of what the spectators saw or believed that they saw, 
illuminate with striking brilliancy the modus o^perandi 
of the processes whereby appearance takes the sem- 
blance of reality and observation is shrewdly led 
astray. The conjurer thus becomes a suggester and 
an actor, not a mere exhibitor of his manipulative 
skill. 

As our present purpose is to investigate the nature 
of real deception, of the formation of false beliefs 
which may in turn lead to unwise action, it will be 
well to note that even such elementary forms of sense- 
deceptions as those just noted may fall under this 
head. No one allowed the use of his eyes will ever 
believe that the pea held between the crossed fingers 

material of conjuring' deceptions. I shall draw from this material in 
several portions of this essay, without further detailed acknowledg- 
ment. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECEPTION 113 

is really double, but children often think that a spoon 
half immersed in water is really bent. Primitive 
peoples believe that the moon really grows smaller as 
it rises above the horizon ; and the ancients could count 
sufficiently upon the ignorance of the people, to make 
use of mirrors and other stage devices for revealing 
the power of the gods. The ability to correct such 
errors depends solely upon the possession of certain 
knowledge or of a confidence in its existence. 

Continuing with deceptions dependent upon excep- 
tional external arrangements, we may find in conjur- 
ing tricks simple and complex illustrations in great 
perfection. When wine is turned into water, when 
two half-dollars are rolled into one, when a box into 
which an article has just been placed is immediately 
opened and found to be empty, when a handkerchief 
is torn and made whole again, when the performer 
drives a nail through his finger, when a coin sud- 
denly appears out of space at the end of a wand, 
when a card which you have just assured yourself is 
the ace of hearts on second view is the king of spades, 
when a bowl filled with water in which goldfish are 
swimming is produced from under a handkerchief, 
when a child rests horizontally in mid-air supported 
only on one elbow, — you are misled or mystified or 
deceived in so far as you are unaware that the wine 
was potassium permanganate and sulphuric acid, and 
was clarified by sodium hyposulphite ; that the one 
half dollar is hollow and the solid one fits into it ; that 
the box has a double bottom controlled by a secret 
spring ; that the real handkerchief was not torn but an- 
other substituted for it ; that the nail has been replaced 



114 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

by one that fits around the finger ; that the wand is 
hollow, and a spring controls the appearance or with- 
drawal of a split coin at its other end ; that one half 
of the card is printed on a flap which, by falling down, 
shows another aspect ; that the bowl covered with a 
rubber cap was secreted under the coat of the per- 
former ; that the child wears a steel suit fitted with 
joints that lock and become rigid. All these are tech- 
nical devices which amuse us by the ingenuity of their 
construction, and, though they may be most baffling, 
provoke about the same type of mental interest as does 
a puzzle or an automaton. Ignorance of this technical 
knowledge or lack of confidence in its existence may 
convert these devices into real deceptions by changing 
the mental attitude of the spectator. However, the 
plausibility of such performances depends so much 
upon their general presentation that they seldom rely 
for their effectiveness solely upon the objective appear- 
ances presented. They are given a dramatic setting, 
or put forward as examples of newly discovered forces 
or of magical control ; and this makes them far more 
effective than this bare account would suggest. 

Asking the reader, then, to bear in mind the very 
great number and ingenuity of such devices, and in- 
sisting once more that the only complete safeguard 
against being misled by them to the extent of forming 
false conceptions of their modus operandi^ is the acqui- 
sition of the purely technical knowledge that underlies 
their success, I shall cite in detail a trick combining 
illustrations of several of the principles to be discussed. 
Several rings are collected from the audience upon 
the performer's wand ; he takes the rings back to the 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECEPTION 115 

stage and throws them upon a platter; a pistol is 
needed, and is handed to the performer from behind 
the scenes ; with copspicuoiis indifference he hammers 
the precious trinkets until they fit into the pistol. A 
chest is hanging on a nail at the side of the stage ; the 
pistol is fired at this chest, which is thereupon taken 
down and placed upon a table towards the rear of the 
stage. The chest is unlocked and found to contain a 
second chest ; this is unlocked and contains a third ; 
this a fourth. As the chests emerge they are placed 
upon the table ; and now from the fourth chest there 
comes a fifth, which the performer carries to the front 
of the stage and shows to contains bonbons around 
each of which is tied one of the rings taken from the 
audience. The effect is most startling. This is the 
appearance of the trick from the audience. Now let us 
consider what really takes place. In the hand holding 
the wand are as many brass rings as are to be collected. 
In walking back to the stage the genuine rings are 
allowed to slip off the wand and the false rings to take 
their places. This excites no suspicion, as the walking 
back to the stage is obviously necessary, and never 
impresses one as part of the performance. The pistol 
is not ready upon the stage, but must be gone for ; and 
as the assistant hands the performer the pistol, the 
latter transfers to the assistant the true rings. The 
hammering of the false rings is now deliberately under- 
taken, thus giving the assistant ample time to tie the 
true rings to the bonbons ; and, while all attention is 
concentrated upon the firing of the pistol, the assistant 
unobtrusively pushes a small table on to the rear of the 
stage. This table has a small fringe hanging about it, 



116 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

certainly an insignificant detail, but none tlie less worth 
noting. The chests are now opened, and, after having 
shown the audience that the second chest comes out of 
the first, the third out of the second, and so on, the 
performer can very readily and quickly draw the last, 
smallest chest from a groove under the table, where it 
was concealed by the aforesaid fringe, and bring it for- 
ward as though it had come out of the next larger 
chest ; this smallest chest is opened and the trick is 
accomplished. So thoroughly convinced is the observer 
by the correctness of his first three inferences that the 
last box came out of the one before it, that I venture 
to say this explanation does not occur to one person in 
many thousand, and that most of the audience would 
have been willing to affirm on oath that they saw the 
last box so emerge. The psychology of the process, 
then, consists in inducing the spectator to draw the 
natural inference, which, in this case, it has been care- 
fully arranged shall be a wrong one. 

Deception becomes real according to the skill with 
which the conditions of reality are imitated. The 
dexterity and training of the professional conjurer 
are measured by the fidelity with which he mimics 
the movements which are supposed to be done. The 
life-likeness of the movement with which the late 
Hermann could take up an imaginary orange with 
both hands from a table (the orange was really let 
down in a trap on the table as the hands were placed 
over it), and carry it over to another table where it 
mysteriously disappeared or passed through a hat, was 
qujte irresistible. Equally so was his palming, or his 
production of objects from his person, or out of the 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECEPTION 117 

air, or in out-of-the-way places. The mimetic move- 
ments accompanying these actions were so vividly real- 
istic, the misdirection of the attention was so perfect, 
as to produce a complete hallucination of the appear- 
ance of objects from places from which they never 
emerged. When this was preceded by an actual 
sleight-of-hand movement, a true hallucination re- 
sulted ; for example, in the trick of the flying cards 
which were skilfully thrown to all parts of the audi- 
torium, a card was occasionally thrown which seemed 
to disappear mysteriously in mid-air ; but in reality no 
card had been thrown but only the movements of 
throwing it imitated. A rabbit was tossed up in the 
air two or three times, and then disappeared at the 
report of a pistol ; in reality the rabbit was not tossed 
at all on the last apparent throw, but was slipped into 
the hollow of the table.^ 

The more closely the conditions that lead to correct 
inferences in ordinary experiences are imitated, the 
more successful will be the illusion ; and a useful prin- 
ciple of conjuring illusions is to first actually do that 
which you afterward wish the audience to believe that 

^ Mr. Triplett went through a similar performance with a ball in the 
presence of school children ; and of 165 children, 78 described how they 
saw the ball go up and disappear ; of those who were thus hallucinated 
40 per cent, were boys and 60 per cent, were girls. Hallucinations of 
perfumes in children were obtained by another experimenter when water 
was sprayed from bottles labeled as perfumes ; 76 per cent, of 381 
pupils saw a toy camel move when a crank attached to the camel by 
a string was turned, although the camel remained quite motionless. 
The experimental tests, though rather cold and lifeless when com- 
pared with the dramatic stage deceptions, illustrate the same process, 
and make possible a comparative study of the degree of deception in 
different individuals and under different circumstances. 



118 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

you continue to do. Thus, when coins are caught in 
mid-air and thrown into a hat, a few are really thrown 
in ; but the others are palmed in the hand holding the 
hat, and allowed to fall when the other hand makes 
the appropriate movements. Some of the rings to be 
mysteriously linked together are given to the audience 
for examination and found to contain no opening, the 
audience at once concluding that the rings which the 
performer retains are precisely like them. In general, 
to gain the confidence of the person to be deceived is 
the first step alike in sleight-of-hand and in criminal 
fraud. 

Ill 

As we turn from the objective to the subjective 
conditions of deception, we enter the true domain of 
psychology ; for the most scientific deceiver is he who 
employs least external aids, and counts most upon his 
power of captivating the intellect. Just as we inter- 
pret appearances by the forms they most commonly 
assume, so it is our average normal selves that inter- 
pret them. A variation in our sense-organs or in our 
judging powers will lead to illusion. The effects of 
contrast may serve as apt illustrations. When passing 
from a dark to a light room the light seems glaringly 
bright; a hand immersed in hot water and then in 
lukewarm water will feel the latter as cold ; when ac- 
customed to the silence of the country the bustle of the 
city seems unusually noisy. Fatigue produces similar 
results. Fatigue the eye for red, and it sees white 
light as green ; the last mile of a long walk seems the 
longest ; the last hour of a long wait, the most tedious. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECEPTION 119 

So long as we recognize our unusual condition and 
allow for its effects, we are not deceived ; but under 
the influence of emotion this power is readily lost, as 
it may be permanently lost in the insane. The delu- 
sions of the insane are often influenced by misinter- 
pretations of real but abnormal sensations under the 
guidance of a dominant idea. On the basis of an 
anaesthetic skin a patient may come to believe that he 
is made of glass or stone ; subjective noises in the ear, 
due to disturbances of the circulation, are transformed 
into the jeers and taunts of an invisible persecutor. 
But for the present we will assume that the judging 
powers do not vary beyond their normal limits. 

In every perception two factors contribute to the 
result. The one is the nature of the object perceived, 
the other that of the percipient. The effect of the 
first factor is obvious and well recognized ; the impor- 
tance of the second factor is more apt to be overlooked. 
The sunset is a different experience to the artist from 
what it is to the farmer ; a piece of rocky scenery is 
viewed with quite a different interest by the artist and 
the geologist. The things that were attractive in child- 
hood have lost their charm ; and what was then, if no- 
ticed at all, considered stupid, has become a cherished 
hobby. Even from day to day, our interests change 
with our moods, and our views of things brighten with 
the weather or the good behavior of our digestive 
^rgans. Not only will the nature of the impression 
change with the interests of the observer, but even 
more, whether or not an object will be perceived at all, 
will depend upon the same cause. The naturalist sees 
what the stroller entirely overlooks ; the sailor detects 



120 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

a ship in the distant horizon where the landsman sees 
nothing ; and this is not because the naturalist and 
the sailor have keener vision, but because they know 
what to look for. Whenever an impression is vague, 
or an observation made under poor conditions, this 
subjective element comes to the front. Darkness, fear, 
any strong emotion, any difficulty in perception reveal 
the same influence. "La nuit tous les chats sont 
gris." Expectation, or expectant attention, is doubt- 
less the most influential of all such factors. When 
awaiting a friend, any indistinct noise is readily con- 
verted into the rumbling of carriage - wheels ; the 
mother hears in every sound the cry of her sick child. 
After viewing an object through a magnifying-glass, 
we detect details with the naked eye which escaped 
our vision before. In spite of the fact that the answer 
in the book happens to be wrong, a considerable pro- 
portion of the class succeeds in reaching it. Every- 
where we are apt to perceive what we expect to per- 
ceive, in the perception of which we have an interest. 
The process that we term "sensation," the gathering 
of evidence by the senses, is dual in character, and de- 
pends upon the eyes that see as well as upon the things 
that are present to be seen. 

Accordingly, the conjurer succeeds in his deception 
by creating an interest in some unimportant detail, 
while he is performing the real trick before our eyes 
without our noticing it. He looks intently at his ex- 
tended right hand, involuntarily carrying our eyes to 
the same spot while he is doing the trick with the 
unobserved left hand. The conjurer's wand is ex- 
tremely serviceable in directing the spectator's atten- 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECEPTION 121 

tion to the place where the performer desires to have 
it.^ A call upon the attention in one direction prevents 
its dispersion in another. When engrossed in work, 
we are oblivious to the noise of the street or even to 
the knock at the door. An absent-minded person is 
one so entirely " present-minded " to one train of 
thought that other stimuli go unperceived. The pick- 
pocket is psychologist enough to know that at the rail- 
way station, the theatre, or wherever one's attention is 
sharply focused in one direction, is he apt to find the 
psychological moment for the exercise of his pursuit. 
It is in the negative field of attention that deception 
effects its purpose. Houdin, the first of the famous 
prestidigitateurs (died 1871), gives it as one of his 
rules never to announce beforehand the nature of the 
effect which you intend to produce, in order that the 
spectator may not know where to fix his attention. 
He also tells us that whenever you count " one^ two^ 
three!!'' as preliminary to the disappearance of an ob- 
ject, the real vanishing must take place before you say 
" three^^ — for the audience have their attention fixed 
upon '' three!'' and whatever is done at " one " or 
" two " entirely escapes their notice. The " patter " 
or setting of a trick often constitutes the real art of its 
execution, because it directs or rather misdirects the 
attention. When performing before the Arabs, Houdin 

1 " Ag-ain, a mere tap with the wand on any spot, at the same time 
looking- at it attentively, will infallibly draw the eyes of a whole com- 
pany in the same direction." — Houdin. 

Robert Houdin, often termed " the king of the conjurers," was a 
man of remarkable ingenuity and insight. His autobiography is 
throughout interesting and psychologically valuable, and his conjur- 
ing precepts abound in points of importance to the psychologist. 



122 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

produced an astounding effect by a very simple trick. 
Under ordinary circumstances the trick was announced 
as the changing of the weight of a chest, making it 
heavy or light at will. The mechanism was simply the 
attachment and disconnection of an electro-magnet, in 
those days a far less familiar affair than now. To 
impress the Arabs he announced that he could spirit 
a man's strength away and restore it again at a 
moment's notice. The trick succeeded as usual, but 
was changed from a mere trick to sorcery — the Arabs 
declaring him in league with the devil. 

The trick, above cited, of supporting a child in mid- 
air, was performed by Houdin at the time when the 
inhalations of ether for purposes of insensibility were 
first introduced. This idea was in the minds of the 
audience, and magical effects were readily attributed 
to etherization. Accordingly the trick was announced 
as " suspension in equilibrium by atmospheric air 
through the action of concentrated ether," and so 
successfully was this aspect of the trick accepted that 
protests were sent in against " the unnatural father 
who sacrificed the health of his poor child to the 
pleasures of the public." In the same way, Kellar in- 
troduces a " thought-reading " performance, by going 
through the movements of hypnotizing the lady who 
assists in the trick ; this enables him to present the 
phenomenon in a mysterious light, and incidentally his 
manipulations furnish the opportunity to connect the 
end of a speaking-tube concealed in the lady's hair 
with another portion attached to the chair. In brief, 
the effect of a trick depends more upon the receptive 
attitude of the spectators than upon what is really 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECEPTION 123 

done. " Conjuring," Mr. Triplett observes, " is tlius 
seen to be a kind of game of preperception wherein 
the performer so plays upon the psychical processes of 
his audience that the issues are as he desires." 

There is, too, a class of tricks which illustrate a 
process, the reverse of this ; and which depend for 
their ^clat upon making the issues coincide with the 
apparently freely expressed choice of the spectator, 
while really the performer as rigidly determines the 
result as in all other cases. One of the best of these 
proceeds by collecting some eight or nine questions pre- 
pared by as many persons in the audience, then placing 
them in a hat, drawing out one at random, and finding 
the answer to the question thus selected written on the 
inside surfaces of a pair of slates. The deception 
begins in the substitution for the collected slips of 
paper, of the same number of slips all containing the 
same carefully prepared question ; the production of the 
writing on the blank slate is a chemical technicality. 
It is a similar result that is obtained in forcing a card ; 
or when the conjurer asks the audience to select one of 
a group of similar objects, and then himself decides 
whether the selected object shall be used for the trick 
or discarded ; likewise, when a magic bottle is pre- 
sented from which any desired variety of liquor may 
be produced, it is easy to suggest the choice according 
to the available possibilities. There is thus an imita- 
tion of the psychological factors as well as of the ob- 
jective factors of real experience ; and both are utilized 
in the deceptions of the professional conjurer. 

The art of misleading the attention is recognized as 
the point of good conjuring, the analogy of the diplo- 



124 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

macy that makes the object of language to conceal 
thought; and many appropriate illustrations of this 
point may be derived from this field. The little flour- 
ishes, tossing an object up in the air, ruffling or 
springing a pack of cards, a little joke — all these 
create a favorable opportunity, a Umj) when the atten- 
tion is diverted and the other hand can reach behind 
the table or into the " pocket." It is not necessary to 
pursue further these details of technique ; it will suffice 
to analyze the points of interest in the chest-and- 
ring trick described above. Here the moment for the 
exchange of the rings is the one which is least suggest- 
ive of its being a part of the performance, and there- 
fore least attended to. The preparations for the shoot- 
ing absorb the attention and allow the introduction of 
the small table at the rear to pass unnoticed ; while 
the series of drawings of the chests so entirely prepare 
the spectator for the appearance of the last chest from 
the one preceding, that he actually sees the chest emerge 
from where it never had been. 

It is necessary, however, not only to provide an 
opportunity for non-attention or misdirected attention, 
but to be able to take advantage of it when the proper 
moment arrives. Here enters the dexterity alike of 
pickpocket and of conjurer. The training in quickness 
and accuracy of motion, in delicacy of touch, in the 
simultaneous perception of a wide range of sense-im- 
pressions, are among the psychological requisites of a 
successful conjurer. He must dissociate the natural 
factors of his habits, actually doing one thing while 
seemingly attending to another ; at the same time his 
eyes and his gestures and his " patter " misdirect the 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECEPTION 125 

attention to what is apparently the essential field of 
operation, but really only a blind to distract attention 
away from the true scene of action. The conjurer 
directs your attention to what he does not do ; he does 
not do what he pretends to do ; and to what he actu- 
ally does he is careful neither to appear to direct his 
own attention nor to arouse yours. 

IV 

There is, however, one important factor lacking in 
the conjurer's performance to illustrate completely the 
psychology of deception ; it is that the mental attitude 
of the observer is too definite. He knows that he is 
being deceived by skill and adroitness, and rather enjoys 
it the more, the more he is deceived. He has nothing 
at stake ; his mind rests easy without any detailed or 
complete explanation of how it was done. Quite dif- 
ferent must have been the feeling of the spectator before 
the necromancer of old, in whose performance was seen 
the evidence of secret powers that could at a moment's 
notice be turned against any one to take away good 
luck, to bring on disease, or even to transform one into a 
beast. When magic spells and wonder-working potions 
were believed in, what we would now speak of as a 
trick was surrounded with a halo of awe and mystery 
by the sympathetic attitude of the spectators. The 
most complete parallel to this in modern times is pre- 
sented by the physical phenomena of Spiritualism ; and 
so many of the manifestations presented by performing 
mediums in evidence of Spiritualism have been exposed 
and proven to be conjuring tricks, that it is no longer 
an assumption to consider them in this connection. 



126 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

Spiritualistic phenomena present a perfect mine for 
illustrations of the psychology of deception, and it is 
these that I shall consider as the final topic in this 
cursory view. 

The first general principle to be borne in mind is 
that the medium performs to spectators in doubt as to 
the interpretation to be placed upon what they see, or 
more or less prepared or determined to see in every- 
thing the evidence of the supernatural. This mental 
attitude on the part of the spectators is worth more to 
the medium than any single factor in the performance. 
The difference between such a presentation and one 
addressed to persons cognizant of the conjuring element 
in the performance and interested in its detection, can- 
not be exaggerated. It is this that makes all the differ- 
ence between the seance swarming with miracles, any 
one of which completely revolutionizes the principles 
of science, and the tedious dreariness of a blank sitting 
varied only by childish utterances and amateurish 
sleight-of-hand. Careful observers often report that 
the very same phenomena that were utterly beyond 
suspicion in the eyes of believers are to unprejudiced 
eyes so apparent " that there was really no need of any 
elaborate method of investigation " ; close observation 
was all that was required, and Mr. Davey, who con- 
ducted an admirable investigation of the reliability of 
accounts of sleight-of-hand performances, has experi- 
mentally shown that of equally good observers, the one 
who is informed of the general modus operandi by 
which such a phenomenon as " slate-writing " is pro- 
duced will make much less of a marvel of it than one 
who is left in doubt in this regard. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECEPTION 127 

Witli these all-powerful magicians — an expected 
result and the willingness to credit a marvel — clearly 
in mind, let us proceed from those instances in which 
they have least effect up to the point where they form 
the chief factor. First come a host of conjuring tricks 
performed on the stage in slightly modified forms, but 
which are presented as " spiritualistic." So simple a 
trick as scratching a name on one's hand with a clean 
pen dipped in water, then writing the name on a slip 
of paper, burning the slip and rubbing the part with 
the ashes, thus causing the ashes to cling to the letters 
formed on the hand and reveal the name, has been 
offered as a proof of spirit agency. Whenever an 
article disappears or rapidly changes its place, the spir- 
itualist is apt to see the workings of hidden spirits ; 
and over and over again have the performances of pro- 
fessional conjurers been declared to be spiritual in ori- 
gin in spite of all protest from the conjurers themselves. 
Here everything depends upon the possession of cer- 
tain technical knowledge; judging without such know- 
ledge is apt to be mere prejudice. Another very large 
class of phenomena consists of those in which the per- 
former is placed in a position apparently inconsistent 
with his taking any active part in their production ; 
rope-tying tests, cabinet seances, the appearance of a 
" spirit-hand " from behind a screen, locking the per- 
former in a cage, sewing him in a bag, and so on. The 
psychologist has very little interest in these; their 
solution depends upon the skill with which knots may 
be picked, locks unfastened, and the other devices by 
which security may be simulated. The chief interest 
in such performances is the historical one, for these 



128 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

have done perhaps more than anything else to convince 
believers of the truth of Spiritualism. Here, where 
everything depends upon the security of the fastenings 
(for once free, the medium can produce messages from 
the spirit-land limited only by his ingenuity and bold- 
ness), upon the particular moment when the examina- 
tion was permitted or the light turned down, upon the 
success with which an appearance of security and in- 
tactness of seals and knots may be simulated, it might 
be supposed that all possible precautions had been 
taken to control and eliminate these possibilities ; while, 
as a matter of fact, the laxity of most investigators in 
this regard is well known. These performances deceive 
because people overlook the technical acquisitions 
needed to pronounce upon the possibility or impossi- 
bility of a fastening having been tampered with and 
apparently restored without detection. If manufac- 
turers of safes were equally credulous, and gave equally 
little time to the study of the security of locks, " safe " 
would be an ironical expression indeed. 

Passing next to the most interesting of spiritualistic 
manifestations, those in which self-deception comes to 
the foreground, I need hardly dwell at length upon the 
tilting of tables, the production of raps by movements 
of which the sitters are unconscious ; for these have 
been so often and so ably presented that they must 
now be well understood. Suffice it to say that it has 
been objectively proven that it is almost impossible not 
to give some indication of one's thoughts, when put 
upon the strain ; and that under excitement, these in- 
dications may become palpably plain and yet remain 
unperceived by the individual who gives them. The 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECEPTION 129 

extreme subtlety of these indications is met by the 
unusual skill of the professional mind-reader, who 
takes his clue from indications which his subject is 
" absolutely confident he did not give." The assur- 
ances of sitters that they know they did not move the 
table are equally valueless ; and nothing but objective 
tests will suffice. The most wholesome lesson to be 
derived from the study of these phenomena is the proof 
that not all our intentions and actions are under the 
control of consciousness, and that, under emotional or 
other excitement, the value of the testimony of con- 
ciousness is very much weakened. Again, it is almost 
impossible to realize the difficulty of accurately describ- 
ing a phenomenon lying outside the common range of 
observation. Not alone that the knowledge necessary 
to pronounce such and such a phenomenon impossible 
of performance by conjuring methods is absent, but 
with due modesty and most sincere intentions the readi- 
ness with which the observing powers and the memory 
play one false is overlooked. In the investigation of 
Mr. Davey, above referred to, the sitters prepared ac- 
counts of the " slate-writing " manifestations they had 
witnessed, and described marvels that had not occurred, 
but which they were convinced they had seen — mes- 
sages written on slates utterly inaccessible to Mr. Davey, 
and upon slates which they had noticed a moment be- 
fore were clean. The witnesses are honest ; how do 
these mistakes arise? Simply a detail omitted here, 
an event out of place there, an unconscious insertion 
in one place, an undue importance given to a certain 
point in another place — nothing of which any one 
needs feel ashamed, something which it requires unusual 



130 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

training and natural gifts to avoid. The mistake lies 
in not recognizing our liability to such error. 

If, however, the spectator is once convinced that he 
has evidence of the supernatural, he soon sees it in 
every accident and incident of the performance. Not 
only that he overlooks natural physical explanations, 
but he is led to create marvels by the very ardor of his 
sincerity. At a materializing seance the believer recog- 
nizes a dear friend in a carelessly arranged drapery 
seen in a dim light. Conclusive evidence of the sub- 
jective character of such perceptions is furnished by 
the fact that the same appearance is frequently recog- 
nized by different sitters as the spiritual counterpart of 
entirely different and totally dissimilar persons. A 
" spirit-photograph " is declared to be the precise image 
of entirely unlike individuals. In the " Revelations of 
a Spirit Medium," we read that a wire gauze mask 
placed in front of a handkerchief, made luminous by 
phosphorus, and projected through the opening of the 
cabinet, was " recognized by dozens of persons as fa- 
thers, mothers, sisters, brothers, cousins, sweethearts, 
wives, husbands, and various other relatives and 
friends." Each one sees what he expects to see, what 
appeals to his interests the most intensely. What the 
unprejudiced observer recognizes as the flimsily dis- 
guised form of the medium, the believer transforms 
into the object of his thoughts and longings. Only let 
the form be vague enough, the light dim enough, the 
emotions upon a sufficient strain, and that part of 
perception in which the external image is deficient will 
be readily supplied by the subjective tendencies of each 
individual. In the presence of such a mental attitude 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECEPTION 131 

the possibilities of deception are endless ; the performer 
grows bolder as his victim passes from a watchful, criti- 
cal attitude to one of easy conviction, and we get sci- 
entific proofs of the fourth dimension of space, of the 
possibility of matter passing through matter, of the levi- 
tation or elongation of the medium's body, of the tran- 
scendence of the laws of gravity. And the same per- 
formance that convinced Professor Zoellner of the 
reality of the fourth dimension of space would prove to 
the spiritualist the intercourse with deceased friends, 
would convince the theosophist of the flight of the 
performer's astral body; and, it may not be irrelevant 
to add, it was the same type of performance that 
served and yet serves to terrify the minds of unculti- 
vated and superstitious savages. All depends not 
upon what is done, but upon the mental disposition 
of the spectator.- Little by little, through neglect, 
through mal-observation and lapses of memory, through 
an unwillingness to mistrust the reports of an ex- 
cited consciousness, caution is abandoned and credulity 
enters. Mediums are actually seen flying out of one 
window and in through another. The wildest and 
most far-fetched fantastic explanation is preferred 
above a simple u)ne ; the bounds of the normal are 
passed ; real hallucinations set in ; conduct becomes 
irrational, and a state hardly distinguishable from in- 
sanity ensues. If this seems improbable, turn to the 
records of witchcraft persecutions and read upon what 
trifling and wholly imaginary evidence thousands of 
innocent lives were sacrificed ; and this not by igno- 
rant, bloodthirsty men, but by earnest, eminent, and 
religious leaders. A child is taken sick, is remem- 



132 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

bered to have been fondled by an old woman ; there- 
fore the woman has put the child under a spell and 
must be burned. A man sees an old woman in the 
woods, and, on turning about, the old woman is gone 
and a hare flies across his track ; he concludes that 
she turned herself into a hare, and the witch test is 
applied. '^When the personal devil was believed in, 
he was seen daily clothed in the garments that imagi- 
nation had given him, and engaged in mischief and 
villainy of all kinds. When witchery was the domi- 
nant superstition, all things gave evidence of that. So 
long as Spiritualism forms a prominent cult with a real 
hold upon the beliefs of its adherents, the number of 
mediums and manifestations will be correspondingly 
abundant. Create a belief in the theory, and the facts 
will create themselves. 



In the production of this state of mind a factor as 
yet unmentioned plays a leading role, the power of 
mental contagion. ^Error, like truth, flourishes in 
crowds^^ At the hearth of sympathy each finds a home. 
The fanatical lead, the saner follow. When a person 
of nervous temperament, not strongly independent in 
thought and action, enters a spiritualistic circle, where 
he is constantly surrounded by confident believers, all 
eager to have him share their sacred visions and pro- 
found revelations, where the atmosphere is replete with 
miracles, and every chair and table may at any instant 
be transformed into a proof of the supernatural, is it 
strange that he soon becomes affected by the contagion 
of belief that surrounds him? He succumbs to its 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECEPTION 133 

influence imperceptibly and hesitatingly at first, and 
perhaps yet restorable to his former modes of thought 
by the fresh air of another and more steadfast mental 
intercourse, but more and more certainly and ardently 
convinced the longer he breathes the seance atmos- 
phere, (r^o form of contagion is so insidious in its 
onset, so difficult to check in its advance, so certain to 
leave germs that may at any moment reveal their per- 
nicious power, as a mental contagion — the contagion 
of fear, of panic, of fanaticism, of lawlessness, of super- 
stition, of error. The story of the witchcraft persecu- 
tions, were there no similar records to deface the pages 
of history, would suffice as a standing illustration of 
the overwhelming power of psychic contagion. To 
illustrate with any completeness its importance in the 
production of deception or in the dissemination of error, 
would carry us beyond the proper limits of the present 
discussion. It enters at every stage of the process and 
in every type of illusion. Although it has least effect 
when deception is carried on by external arrangements, 
by skilful counterfeits of logical inferences, yet even 
then it enters into the distinction between a critical, 
skeptical, and irresponsive body of spectators, and one 
that is sympathetic, acquiescent, and cordial ; it renders 
it easier to effect bold and striking impressions with a 
larger audience than with a smaller one ; its power is 
greatest, however, where the subjective factor in decep- 
tion is greatest, more particularly in such forms of 
deception as have been last described. 

In brief, we must add to the many factors which 
contribute to deception the recognized lowering of 
critical ability, of the power of accurate observation, 



134 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

indeed of rationality, which merely being one of a 
crowd induces. The conjurer finds it easier to perform 
to large audiences because, among other reasons, it is 
easier to arouse their admiration and sympathy, easier 
to make them forget themselves and enter into the 
uncritical spirit of wonderland. It would seem that in 
some respects the critical tone of an assembly, like the 
strength of a chain, is that of its weakest member. 
" The mental quality of the individuals in a crowd," 
says M. Le Bon, " is without importance. From the 
moment that they are in the crowd the ignorant and 
the learned are equally incapable of observation." 

VI 

In this review of the types of deception I have 
made no mention of such devices as the gaining of 
one's confidence for selfish ends, preying upon igno- 
rance or fear, acting the friend while at heart the 
enemy, planned connivance and skilful plotting, to- 
gether with the whole outfit of insincerity, villainy, and 
crime. It is not that these are without interest or are 
unrelated to the several types of deception above con- 
sidered, but that they are too complex and too hetero- 
geneous to be capable of ready or rigid analysis. 
When deception becomes an art of life, consciously 
planned and craftily executed, there must be acting 
and subterfuge and evasion to maintain the appearance 
of sincerity. The psychology of the processes therein 
concerned is almost coincident with the range of social, 
intellectual, and emotional influences. Complex as 
these operations may be, they have, in common with 
the less intricate forms of deception, the attempt to 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECEPTION 135 

parallel the conditions underlying the logical infer- 
ences which it is desired to induce. If we add this 
great class of deceptions to those already enumerated, 
we may perhaps realize how vast is its domain, and 
how long and sad must be the chapter that records the 
history of human error. 

Ethics is so closely related to psychology — right 
knowing to right doing — that a brief hcec fahula docet 
by way of summary may not be out of place. We 
find, first, a class of sense-deceptions which are due 
to the nature of our sense-endowment, and deceive 
only so long as their true character remains unknown. 
These are neither pernicious nor difficult to correct. 
Next comes a class of deceptions that deceive because 
we are ignorant of the possibilities of technical devices, 
such as those used in legerdemain, and pronounce upon 
the possibility or impossibility of a certain explanation 
in advance of complete knowledge. But still another 
class, and that the most dangerous and insidious, are 
the deceptions in which self-deception plays the leading 
role. The only safeguard here is a preventive ; the 
thorough infusion of sound habits of thought, a full 
recognition of the conditions under which the testimony 
of consciousness becomes dubious, an appreciation of 
the true value of objective scientific evidence, and an 
inoculation against the evils of contagion by an in- 
dependent, unprejudiced, logical schooling. When 
once the evil spirit of self-deception, fed by the 
fire of contagion and emotional excitement, begins to 
spread, reason has little control. As Tyndall tells us, 
such " victims like to believe, and they do not like to 
be undeceived. Science is perfectly powerless in the 



136 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

presence of this frame of mind. ... It [science] keeps 
down the weed of superstition, not by logic, but by 
slowly rendering the mental soil unfit for cultivation." 
With the spread of an education that fosters independ- 
ence and self-reliance, with the growth of the capacity 
to profit by the experiences of others, with the recogni- 
tion of the technical requisites that alone qualify one 
for a judgment in this or that field, with a knowledge 
of the possibilities of deception and of the psycho- 
logical processes by which error is propagated, the soil 
upon which superstitions, psychic delusions, mental 
epidemics, or senseless fads are likely to flourish will 
gradually be rendered unfit. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIKITUALISM 



In 1848, from the town of Hydeville, New York, 
came the somewhat startling announcement that cer- 
tain knockings, the source of which had mystified the 
household of one of its residents, seemed to be intelli- 
gently guided and ready to appear at call. Somewhat 
later, communication was established by agreeing that 
one rap should mean tio, and three raps yes ; to 
which was afterwards added the device of calling off 
the alphabet and noting at which letters the raps 
occurred. In this way, the rapper revealed himself as 
the spirit of a murdered peddler. Within a short 
period the news of this simple and childish invention 
had called into existence thousands of spirit-circles; 
had developed wonderful " mediums" to whose special 
gifts the manifestations were ascribed ; had amassed 
a vast store of strange testimony ; had added to the 
rappings such performances as moving tables, causing 
objects to be mysteriously thrown about, playing on in- 
struments by unseen hands, materializing spirit flowers, 
producing spirit forms and faces, gathering messages 
from spirits on sealed slates, and so on. In brief, the 
movement became an epidemic ; and that despite the 
fact that from the beginning and continuously satis- 
factory and rational explanations were offered of what 
really occurred, and that mediums were constantly 



138 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

detected in the grossest fraud. So early as 1851 the 
peculiar rappings occurring in the presence of the Fox 
sisters, the originators of the movement, were conclu- 
sively traced to the partial dislocation and resetting of 
a joint of the knee or foot ; and the raps failed to occur 
when the girls were placed in a position in which the 
leverage necessary for this action was denied them. 
Many years thereafter, in 1888, Margaret Fox (Mrs. 
Kane) and Katie Fox (Mrs. Jencken) publicly con- 
fessed that the raps to which they as children gave rise 
were produced by dislocation of the toes ; and one of 
them added to their confession a demonstration of how 
this was done. It is unfortunate alike that the char- 
acter of the confessers leaves much to be desired, that 
the confession was both belated and made under sen- 
sational surroundings, and that the sinners have no 
better excuse to offer for their long silence than that 
the movement was started when they were too young 
to appreciate what was being done, and that when they 
realized the fraud which they were fostering and the 
success with which they were meeting, it was too late 
or too difficult to retract. None the less, these circum- 
stances do not destroy the interest in tracing the evi- 
dence of deception and the presence of a moral taint 
to the very starting-point of one of the most widespread 
delusions of modern times. 

The psychological aspect of the phenomena of Spir- 
itualism may be presented in a consideration of these 
questions : How is it that the manifestations produced 
in evidence of spirit-control carry conviction? What is 
the origin of this mass of testimony in favor of spirit- 
ualistic marvels? Whence this general tendency to 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM 139 

believe in the reality of spirit-influence as thus mani- 
fested ? For the purposes of these inquiries it will be 
profitable to consider a few typical manifestations and 
to observe their true inwardness. Among the most 
influential mediums was Henry Slade ; through him 
many were converted to Spiritualism, including the 
famous Zollner coterie, for whom he gave a spiritual 
demonstration of the reality of the fourth dimension of 
space. After all the prominence which has been given 
to the Zollner sittings and the importance attached to 
them by reason of the eminence of the participants, it 
is somewhat unexpected to read in the- report of a reli- 
able observer who interviewed Zollner's associates, that 
"of the four eminent men whose names have made 
famous the investigation, there is reason to believe 
one, Zollner^ was of unsound mind at the time, and 
anxious for an experimental demonstration of an 
already accepted hypothesis (the fourth dimension of 
space) ; another, Fechner^ was partly blind, and be- 
lieved because of Zollner's observations ; a third, 
jScheihner, was also afflicted with defective vision, and 
not entirely satisfied in his own mind as to the phe- 
nomena; and a fourth, Weber, was advanced in age, 
and did not even recognize the disabilities of his asso- 
ciates." None knew anything about conjuring, and, 
deservedly honored as these men were in their own 
specialties, they were certainly not fitted to compete 
with a professional like Slade. One of Slade's stand- 
ard performances was the production of communica- 
tions on a slate held beneath a table, in answer to 
questions asked by his sitters verbally or in writing, 
the writing in some cases being concealed in folded 



140 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

slips of paper. In his performances before the Seybert 
Commission it was soon discovered that the character 
of the writing on the slates was of two kinds. The 
long messages were neatly written, with the i's dotted 
and the ^'s crossed, and often produced unasked, or not 
in direct answer to a question ; while the short ones 
in prompt answer to direct questions were scrawled, 
hardly legible, and evidently written without the aid of 
the eye. The many methods of producing the short 
writings were repeated by a professional prestidigita- 
teur much more skillfully than by Slade. The com- 
mission distinctly saw every step in Slade's method on 
one occasion or another, but were utterly baffled by the 
conjurer (Mr. Harry Kellar), who subsequently re- 
vealed his methods to one of their number. The long 
messages were written beforehand, on slates to be sub- 
stituted at a favorable opportunity for the ones sup- 
plied to the medium. At the last seance with Dr. 
Slade, two prepared slates were resting against a table 
behind him, and one of the investigators kept a sharp 
watch upon these slates. " Unfortunately, it was too 
sharp ; for one second the medium saw me looking at 
them. It was enough. That detected look prevented 
the revelation of those elaborate spirit messages. But 
when the seance was over, and he was signing the 
receipt for his money, I passed round behind his chair 
and pushed these slates with my foot, so as to make 
them fall over, whereupon the writing on one of them 
was distinctly revealed." The medium at once pushed 
back his chair, snatched the slates, hurriedly washed 
them, and could with difficulty regain sufficient com- 
posure to sign the receipt for the exorbitant payment 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM 141 

of his services. Another observer says with regard 
to Slade : " The methods of this medium's operations 
appear to me to be perfectly transparent, and I wish 
to say emphatically that I am astonished beyond ex- 
pression at the confidence of this man in his ability to 
deceive, and at the recklessness of the risks which he 
assumes in the most barefaced manner. The only 
reason of our having any so-called 'manifestations,' 
under the circumstances, was because of the fact that 
the committee had agreed in advance to be entirely 
passive, and to acquiesce in every condition imposed." 
Mrs. Sidgwick, an able English observer, detected the 
fraudulent character of Blade's performances from the 
beginning. She points out five important grounds of 
suspicion : " His conjurer-like way of trying to distract 
one's attention, his always sitting so as to have the 
right hand to manipulate the slate, the vague and gen- 
eral character of the communications, his compelling 
one to sit with one's hands in a position that makes it 
difiicult to look under the table, and his only allowing 
two sitters at a time." 

The Seybert Commission, it should be explained, 
owes its origin to the bequest of an ardent believer in 
Spiritualism, Mr. Henry Seybert, to the University of 
Pennsylvania; which was coupled with the condition 
that this university should appoint a commission to 
investigate modern Spiritualism. It is from their re- 
port^ that several of my illustrations are taken. The 

1 Preliminary Report of the Commission appointed by the University of 
Pennsylvania to investigate Modern Spiritualism, Philadelphia, 1887, 
Lippincott, pp. 159. The members of the commission were : Dr. 
^Yilliara Pepper, Dr. Joseph Leidy, Dr. G. S. Koenig-, Prof. R. E. 
Thompson, Prof. G. S. Fullerton, Dr. H. H. Furness, Mr. Coleman 
SeUers, Dr. J. W. White, Dr. C. B. Knerr, and Dr. S. WeirMitchelL 



142 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

members of this commission began their investigations 
with an entire willingness to accept any conclusion 
warranted by facts ; and their chairman, Dr. Horace 
Howard Furness, confessed " to a leaning in favor of 
the substantial truth of spiritualism." They examined 
many of the most famous mediums and the manifes- 
tations that contributed most to their fame. Their 
verdict, individually and collectively, is the same re- 
garding every medium with whom they saw anything 
noteworthy : gross, intentional fraud throughout. The 
mediums were treated with the utmost fairness and 
courtesy ; their conditions were agreed to and upheld ; 
every one, in each kind of manifestation, was caught 
in the act of trickery, or else the trick was repeated 
and explained by one of the commission. This testi- 
mony goes far to justify the substitution of " trick " 
for "manifestation," of "senseless cant" for "spiritual- 
istic explanation," of "adroit conjurer" for "medium." 
While the accumulative force of this conclusion can 
only be appreciated by a reading of the report itself, a 
few further illustrations will contribute to a realization 
of the nature of the "manifestations " and their typical 
milieu. Mrs. Patterson, medium, gives a performance 
similar to that of Slade. Dr. Knerr had a sitting with 
her, and adjusted a mirror about his person so as to 
reflect whatever was going on beneath the table. " In 
the mirror I beheld a hand . . . stealthily insert its 
fingers between the leaves of the slate, take out the 
little slip (containing the question), unfold and again 
fold it, grasp the little pencil . . . and with rapid but 
noiseless motion . . . write across the slate from left 
to right a few lines ; then the leaves of the slate were 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM 143 

closed, the little pencil laid on the top," and the spirits 
were graciously invoked to send a message. 

The monotony of the narrative of somewhat vulgar 
deception is agreeably relieved by the entertaining 
account given by Dr. Furness of his experiences with 
mediums. He sent out sealed letters, the contents of 
which certain mediums claimed to be able to read and 
to answer by the aid of spirits, and found the seals 
tampered with, and mucilage and skill used to conceal 
the crime ; he asked the same question of various me- 
diums and received hopelessly contradictory answers ; 
he detected the form of the medium in her assumed 
materializations, and found the spirit ready to answer 
to any and every name in fiction or reality, from 
" Olivia " of " The Talking Oak " to Shakespeare. 
One of the questions asked by Mr. Furness related to 
the ownership in life of a skull in his possession, used 
for a long time as the " Yorick's skull " at a Phila- 
delphia theatre. He was told by one medium that it 
was " Marie St. Clair," by another that it was " Sister 
Belle." Hence these remarks : " Marie St. Clair, who, 
on spiritual authority as I have shown above, shares 
the ownership with Sister Belle of ' Yorick's ' skull in 
my possession, has never failed to assent whenever I 
ask a Spirit if it be she. To be sure, she varies with 
every different medium, but that is only one of her 
piquant little ways, which I early learned to overlook 
and at last grew to like. She is both short and tall, 
lean and plump, with straight hair and with curls, 
young and middle-aged, so that now it affords me real 
pleasure to meet with a new variety of her." Equally 
amusing is the conversation with a Spirit who was 



144 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

led to assent to the suggestion that she was " Olive," 
and at length was addressed thus : " ' Oh, Olive, 
there 's one thing I want so much to ask you about. 
. . . What was the matter with you that afternoon, 
one summer, when your father rode his hunter to the 
town, and Albert followed after upon his ; and then 
your mother trundled to the gate behind the dappled 
grays ? Do you remember it, dear ? ' ' Perfectly.' 
' Well, don't you remember, nothing seemed to please 
you that afternoon, you left the novel all uncut upon 
the rosewood shelf, you left your new piano shut, some- 
thing seemed to worry you? Do you remember it, 
dear one ? ' ' All of it ; yes, yes.' ' Then you came 
singing down to that old oak, and kissed the place 
where I had carved our names with many vows. Tell 
me, you little witch, who were you thinking of all the 
time ? ' ' All the while of you,' she sighed. ' And 
do you, oh, do you remember that you fell asleep 
under the oak, and that a little acorn fell into your 
bosom and you tossed it out in a pet? Ah, Olive 
dear, I found that acorn, and kissed it twice and 
kissed it thrice for thee ! And do you know that it 
has grown into a fine young oak ? ' 'I know it,' she 
answered softly and sadly, 'I often go to it.' This 
was almost too much for me, and as my memory, on 
the spur of the moment, of Tennyson's ' Talking Oak ' 
was growing misty, I was afraid the interview might 
become embarrassing for lack of reminiscences ; " so 
the materialization of a very human form was brought 
to a close. To this may be added — to illustrate the 
baref acedness of the medium's business — the fact, com- 
municated to me by Dr. Furness, that a noted medium 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM 145 

had visited a professional juggler, and, "making no 
secret to him of his trickery as a medium for inde- 
pendent slate- writing, had purchased from the juggler 
several other tricks with which to carry on his spiritual- 
istic trade." 

There is both entertainment and instruction in Dr. 
Knerr's account of a , stance in which the spirit of an 
Indian and the mysterious use of a drum were to form 
parts of the performance. He tells of his success in 
getting some printer's ink on the drum-sticks just 
before the lights were lowered, and of the bewildered 
astonishment (when the lights were turned up after 
the Indian had manifested) at the condition of the 
medium's hands. " How in the world printer's ink 
could have gotten smeared over them while under the 
control of ' Deerfoot, the Indian,' no one, not even 
the medium, could fathom." We may read how a 
medium who professed to materialize a " spirit " right- 
hand while apparently holding his sitter's hand or arm 
with both his own, was shown to imitate this double 
grip with one hand and to do the hocus-pocus with the 
other. We may vary the nature of the fraud almost 
indefinitely and observe how universal, how coarse, how 
degrading it is, and how readily it may be induced to 
leave its hiding-place to snatch at a cunningly offered 
bait, — until in the end, if it were not so sad, it would 
be only ridiculous. 

In the reports of the investigations of mediums, 
published by the Society for Psychical Research (vol. 
iv.), we find accounts of the performances of one Eng- 
linton, also with slate-writing, and whose success, as 
described by enthusiastic sitters, does not fall short of 



146 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

the miraculous. Yet tlie description of this wonder- 
worker's doings by a competent observer, Professor 
Carvill Lewis, renders the manifestations absolutely- 
transparent. He sat intently watching Englinton for 
an hour, and nothing happened ; fearing a blank seance, 
he purposely diverted his attention. The moment he 
looked away the manifestations began, and he could 
see " the medium look down intently toward his knees 
and in the direction of the slate. I now quickly turned 
back my head, when the slate was brought up against 
the table with a sharp rap." The manoeuvre was re- 
peated with the same result; and while the writing 
was going on, Professor Lewis distinctly saw "the 
movement of the central tendon in his wrist corre- 
sponding to that made by his middle finger in the act 
of writing. Each movement of the tendon was simul- 
taneously accompanied by the sound of a scratch on 
the slate." Again, for the answer to the request to 
define " Idocrase," Englinton required the use of a dic- 
tionary, and left the room for a minute ; the answer 
was then written just as it is given in Webster's dic- 
tionary; but, unfortunately, alhumina was read for 
alumina. When the slate, which acts with a spring, 
was to be closed, Englinton suddenly sneezed ; when 
the writing was small and faint, he shifted his position 
until he came within a few inches of it ; a postage 
stamp secretly glued across the two leaves of the 
double slate prevented all manifestations ; a double fee 
immediately caused further manifestations, when, owing 
to the exhaustion of power, such had just been declared 
to be impossible ; and the writing on the slates was iden- 
tified by an expert as that of Englinton. It was the 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM 147 

same Enolinton who was convicted of connivance with 
Mme. Blavatsky in the j^rodiiction of a spurious theo- 
sophic marvel ; and it is to him that the following- 
story, supplied by Mr. Padshah and indorsed by Mr. 
Hodgson (the exposer of Mme. Blavatsky), I'elates : 
Mr. Padshah and a friend had asked for Gujerati 
writing at a seance, but without success. Mr. Padshah 
(without informing his friend) sent anonymously to 
Engiinton a poem in Gujerati ; and the friend received 
from the medium a minutely faithful copy of the same 
on a slate, as the direct revelation of the spirits ! 

II 

But all this accounts for only part of the problem. 
To convict every medium of fraud is not a complete 
explanation of the appearance which this belief pre- 
sented in its most characteristic form some decades 
ago, and still presents. It remains to account for the 
great success of the movement ; for the fact that so 
many have beien deceived and so few have really under- 
stood ; to show why we are to believe the Seybert 
Commission, and not credit the countless miracle- 
mongers. This is psychologically the most interesting 
portion of the problem, and has been very successfully 
treated by Mrs. Sidgwick, Mr. Hodgson, and Mr. 
Davey, of the Society for Psychical Research. 

There is a very broadspread notion that anybody 
can go to a spiritualistic seance and give a reliable 
opinion as to whether what he or she may chance to 
see is explicable as conjuring or not. Especially where 
the right to one's opinion is regarded as a corollary 
to the right of liberty, does this notion prevail. It is 



148 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

probably not an exaggeration to maintain that most 
such claimants are about as competent to form a 
trustworthy opinion on such a subject as they are to 
pronounce upon the genuineness of a Syriac manu- 
script. The matter is in some aspects as much a 
technical acquisition as is the diagnosticating of a 
disease. It is not at all to the discredit of any one's 
powers of observation or intellectual acumen to be 
deceived by the performances of a conjurer; and the 
same holds true of the professional part of mediumistic 
phenomena. Until this homely but salutary truth is 
impressed with all its importance upon all intending 
investigators, there is little hope of bringing about a 
proper attitude towards these and kindred phenomena. 
We believe that there will be an eclipse of the moon 
when the astronomer so predicts, not because we can 
calculate the time or even understand how the astrono- 
mer does it, but because that is a technical acquisition 
which he has learned and we have not ; and so with a 
thousand other and more humble facts of daily life. 
Spiritualism, to a large extent, comes under the same 
category ; and observers who have acquainted them- 
selves with the possibilities of conjuring and the natural 
history of deception, who by their training and endow- 
ment have fitted themselves to be competent judges of 
such alleged ultra-physical facts — these persons have 
the same right to our confidence and respect as a body 
of chemists or physicians on a question within their 
province. It by no means follows that all scientists 
are fitted for an investigation of this kind, nor that all 
laymen are not ; it does follow that a body of trained 
and able observers, who are aware of the possibilities 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM 149 

of faulty observation and of the tendency to substitute 
hasty inference for fact, who know something about 
deception as a psychological characteristic, who have 
acquired or call to their aid the technical requisites for 
such an investigation, are better fitted to carry it to a 
logical outcome than are others, equally distinguished 
in other directions and equally able, if you will, but 
who have not these special qualifications. It follows 
that it is not fair for you to set up what you think you 
have seen as overthrowing their authority ; even if you 
happen to be an unprejudiced and accurate observer 
and have weighed the probability of your observations 
being vitiated by one or other of the many sources of 
error in such observation, it is only a small fact, 
though of course one worthy of notice. There is no 
good reason why the average man should set so much 
store by his own impressions of sense, when the falli- 
bility of other witnesses is so readily demonstrable. 

Whatever of seeming dogmatism there is in this 
view is removed by the experimental demonstration 
furnished by Messrs. Hodgson and Davey, that the 
kind and amount of mal-observation and faulty de- 
scription which an average observer will introduce 
into the account of a performance such as the medium 
gives, is amply sufficient to account for the divergence 
between his report of the performance and what really 
occurred. The success of a large class of tricks de- 
pends upon diverting the observer's attention from the 
points of real importance, and in leading him to draw 
inferences perfectly valid under ordinary circumstances 
but entirely wrong in the particular case. It must be 
constantly remembered that the judging powers are at 



150 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

a great disadvantage in observing sucli performances, 
and that it is a kind of judgment in which they have 
little practice. In the intercourse of daily life a certain 
amount of good faith and of confidence in the straight- 
forwardness of the doings of others prevents us from 
exercising that close scrutiny and suspicion here neces- 
sary. We know that most of our neighbors have 
neither the intention nor the sharpness to deceive us, 
and do not live on the principle of the detective, who 
regards every one as dishonest until proven to be 
otherwise. This attitude of extreme suspicion is in- 
dispensable in dealing with the phenomena now under 
discussion. It follows, therefore, that the layman can- 
not serve as a pilot for himself or for others in such 
troubled waters. This, however, if duly recognized, 
need not be a matter of concern. " This unprepared- 
ness and inobservancy of mind in the presence of a 
conjurer," says Mr. Hodgson, is not " a thing of which 
any one who is not familiar with the tricks already 
need be ashamed." Even a professional may be non- 
plussed by a medium's performance, if he have no 
experience in the special kind of sleight-of-hand re- 
quired for the trick. This is the experience of Mr. 
Harry Kellar ; he at first declared himself unable to 
explain slate-writing as a trick, but now can repeat 
the process in a variety of ways, and with far greater 
skill than is shown by the mediums. We may there- 
fore approach Mr. Davey's investigation with the as- 
surance that, in all probability, we too should have 
failed to detect what was really done, and should have 
rendered quite as erroneous account of what we saw as 
did his actual sitters ; and according to our training 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM 151 

and temperament we should have drawn our several 
conclusions, and all of them variously wide of the 
mark. 

Mr. Davey (who, by the way, was at one time de- 
ceived almost into conversion by spiritualistic phe- 
nomena, and who, before he took up the matter seri- 
ouslj^, recorded his conviction that " the idea of 
trickery or jugglery in slate-writing communications is 
quite out of the question ") was an expert amateur 
conjurer, and repeated the slate-writing performances 
of such as Engiinton with at least equal skill. He 
arranged with Mr. Hodgson to give sittings to several 
ladies and gentlemen, on the condition that they send 
him detailed written accounts of what they had seen. 
He did not pose as a medium nor accept a fee, but 
simply said that he had something to show which his 
sitters were to explain as best they could, and with 
due consideration of trickery as a possible mode of ex- 
planation. The " medium " has here a decided advan- 
tage over Mr. Davey, because his sitters come to him 
with a mental attitude that entertains, however re- 
motely, the possibility of witnessing something super- 
natural ; and this difference is sufficient to create an 
adjustment of the powers of observation less fitted to 
detect trickery than if the performer refrains from 
announcing himself as the go-between of the super- 
natural. This is well illustrated in the reports of Mr. 
Davey's sitters ; for a few friends who were told before- 
hand that they were to witness a sleight-of-hand per- 
formance, or were strongly led to believe it such, made 
much less of a marvel of the performance than those 
who had not been thus enlightened. " Nevertheless " 



152 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

(I am citing from Mr. Podmore's resume), " the effect 
produced was such that a well-known professional con- 
jurer expressed his complete inability to explain the 
results by trickery ; that no one of his sitters ever de- 
tected his modus operandi ; that most were completely 
baffled, or took refuge in the supposition of a new form 
of electricity, or ' a powerful magnetic force used in 
double manner : (1) a force of attraction, and (2) that 
of repulsion ' ; and that more than one spiritualist 
ascribed the phenomena to occult agency, and regarded 
— perhaps still regard — Mr. Davey as a renegade 
medium." 

Mr. Davey's performances, as described by many of 
his sitters, like the descriptions of the performances 
of many a medium, are marvelous enough to demand 
the hypothesis of occult agency : " Writing between a 
conjurer's own slates in a way quite inexplicable to 
the conjurer ; writing upon slates locked and carefully 
guarded by witnesses ; writing upon slates held by 
the witnesses firmly against the under-surface of the 
table ; writing upon slates held by the witnesses 
above the table ; answers to questions written secretly 
in locked slates ; correct quotations appearing on 
guarded slates from books chosen by the witnesses at 
random, and sometimes mentally, the books not touched 
by the ' medium ' ; writing in different colors men- 
tally chosen by the witnesses, covering the whole side 
of one of their own slates ; messages in languages 
unknown to the ' medium,' including a message in Ger- 
man, for which only a mental request had been made, 
and a letter in Japanese in a double slate locked and 
sealed by the witness ; the date of a coin placed by the 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM 153 

witness in a sealed envelope correctly written in a 
locked slate upon the table, the envelope remaining in- 
tact ; a word written between slates screwed together 
and also corded and sealed together, the word being 
chosen by the witness after the slates were fastened 
by himself, etc., etc. And yet, though ' autographic ' 
fragments of pencil were ' heard ' weaving mysterious 
messages between and under and over slates, and frag- 
ments of chalk were seen moving about under a 
tumbler placed above the table in full view, none of 
the sitters witnessed that best phenomenon, Mr, Davey 
writing.''^ 

It must not be supposed that the errors of mal- 
description and lapse of memory thus committed are at 
aU serious in themselves; on the contrary, they are 
mostly such as would be entirely pardonable in ordinary 
matters. Mr. Hodgson places them in four classes. 
In the first, the observer interpolates a fact which 
really did not happen, but which he was led to believe 
had occurred ; he records that he examined the slate, 
when he really did not. Secondly, for similar causes, 
he substitutes one statement for another closely like it ; 
he says he examined the slate minutely, when he really 
only did so hastily. Thirdly, he transposes the order 
in which the events happened, making the examina- 
tion of the slate occur at a later period than when it 
really took place. Lastly, he omits certain details 
which he was carefully led to consider trivial, but which 
really were most important. Such slight lapses as these 
are sufficient to make a marvel of a clever piece of 
conjuring ; add to this the increased temptations for 
mal-observation afforded by the dim light and mysteri- 



154 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

ous surroundings of the medium, as well as by the 
sympathetic attitude of the sitters, and the wide diver- 
gence between the miraculous narratives of spiritualists 
and the homely deceptions which they are intended to 
describe, is no longer a mystery. 

It cannot be too strongly insisted upon how slight 
may be the clue that holds the key to the explanation, 
how easy it is to overlook it, how mysterious the per- 
formance becomes without it. It may be the difference 
between placing the slate in a given position and start- 
ing to do so when the hand of the medium naturally 
comes forward to receive it ; it may depend upon 
whether the slates were examined just before or just 
after a certain detail in the performance which was 
carefully not made prominent ; it may depend upon 
the difficulty of really seeing a quick and unexpected 
sleight-of-hand movement on the part of a skilled per- 
former; it may depend upon whether the question 
asked was really of your own choosing, or was deftly 
led up to ; it may depend upon a score of other equally 
insignificant details upon which the assurance of the 
average person, that such mal-observation or misde- 
scription did not occur, is almost worthless. These are 
some of the slighter factors in the case ; there may be 
much more serious ones which lead not merely to exag- 
geration but to elaborate falsification and distortion of 
truth, and to the emphatic assertion of the most extra- 
vagant miracles, coupled usually with the assurance 
that there was no possibility or room for deception. 
Mr. Davey's performance was relatively a matter-of-fact 
test with critical and intelligent sitters ; hence we 
should expect the divergence between report and real- 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM 155 

ity to be far less serious than when the question at 
issue is the demonstration of the supernatural by an 
appeal to the religious fervor and to the emotional sus- 
ceptibilities of would-be believers and sympathetic 
propagandists. I shall return to this difference of 
attitude in discussing the prepossession in favor of the 
belief in Spiritualism ; for the present, it is sufficient 
to notice that under the most favorable combination of 
circumstances — that is, an able, educated, and expe- 
rienced observer witnessing a definite performance in 
a calm, critical mood, and carefully preparing a written 
account of his observations — the difference between 
actual fact and the testimony of the witness is still 
considerable, and the divergence often upon essential 
points. We are accordingly justified in making allow- 
ance for double or treble or a hundredfold more seri- 
ous divergence between fact and report, when we pass 
to decidedly less favorable conditions, such as those of 
the ordinary spiritualistic test or stance ; for these 
surely present conditions least conducive to accuracy 
of observation or of record. 

It is seldom that so direct and forcible an applica- 
tion of experimental results to actual mental expe- 
riences occurring under familiar circumstances can be 
made, as is the case in regard to this noteworthy inves- 
tigation of Messrs. Hodgson and Davey. This in- 
vestigation, almost at one stroke, throws a blinding light 
upon the entire field of the phenomena ; accounting in 
large part for the vast aggregate of testimony in favor 
of miracles by actual witnesses, demonstrating the 
readiness with which we may unwittingly deceive our- 
selves by false observation and others by lapses of 



156 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

memory, as to what we actually witnessed ; and again 
presenting the nature of these fallible characteristics 
of sense-perception and memory, of inference and judg- 
ment, so strikingly and tangibly as to serve as a classic 
illustration for the psychologist. The practical import 
of these considerations has been quite generally dis- 
regarded by upholders of the spiritualistic hypothesis, 
and has by no means been fully appreciated by those 
who lay claim to an opinion upon the significance of 
spiritualistic manifestations, and who discuss the psy- 
chological questions which they involve. 

It is pertinent to add that after Mr. Davey's death, 
Mr. Hodgson felt free to publish a precise account of 
what Mr. Davey actually did during the slate-writing 
seances.i The description from before the footlights 
may thus be compared with the account from behind 
the scenes ; and although verbal accounts must always 
be weak and lack the realistic touch of the mise en 
scene^ yet this account makes possible a kinetoscopic 
reproduction, as it were, of the original sitting; we 
may observe the point at which the several sitters com- 
mitted their faults of defective observation or report ; 
we may examine at leisure the several steps in the 
performance which the eyes overlooked in the hasty 
single glimpse afforded by the sitting itself ; we may 
attend to details which in the original sitting reached 
only the outlying and evanescent phases of conscious- 
ness. But, on the whole, the psychological compre- 
hension of the " seance " was sufficiently manifest 
without this disclosure of the modus operandi; the 
disclosure has its value, however, in removing the pos- 

1 Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Besearch, vol. viii. 253. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM 157 

sibility of certain forms of criticism of the results, in 
presenting data by which the specific nature of mal- 
observation may be more concretely studied, and in 
convincing the more obstinate and skeptical of how 
natural it is to err in matters beyond the range of 
one's intimate experience. 

A corroborative illustration of the subjective con- 
tribution to deceptions of this type — the part that 
" always comes out of our head," in Professor James's 
phrase — is furnished by M. Binet's series of photo- 
graphs, taken at the rate of ten or twelve per second, 
of the hands of the performer during a sleight-of-hand 
performance: for the photographs do not show the 
essential illusion which the eyes seem to see, but which 
is really supplied by the fixed interpretative habits of 
the spectators. 

The conclusion thus experimentally arrived at by 
Messrs. Hodgson and Davey is reinforced by other 
investigators. After witnessing a seance that was 
merely a series of the simplest and most glaringly evi- 
dent tricks, Mrs. Sidgwick was expected to have had 
all her doubts entirely removed, and was assured that 
what she had seen was better than the materializations 
at Paris. " Experiences like this make one feel how 
misleading the accounts of some completely honest wit- 
nesses may be ; for the materializations in Paris were 
those which the Comte de Bullet had with Firman, 
where near relatives of the Count were believed con- 
stantly to appear, and which are among the most won- 
derful recorded in spiritualistic literature. And, after 
all, it appears that these marvelous seances were no 
better than this miserable personation by Haxby." 



158 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

The Seybert Commission finds that " with every pos- 
sible desire on the part of spiritualists to tell the truth, 
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, concerning 
marvelous phenomena, it is extremely difficult to do so. 
Be it distinctly understood that we do not for an in- 
stant impute willful perversion of the truth. All that 
we mean is that, for two reasons, it is likely that the 
marvels oi^ spiritualism will be, by believers in them, 
incorrectly and insufficiently reported. The first rea- 
son is to be found in the mental condition of the ob- 
server ; if he be excited or deeply moved, his account 
cannot but be affected, and essential details will surely 
be distorted. For a second reason, note how hard it 
is to give a truthful account of any common, everyday 
occurrence. The difficulty is increased a hundredfold 
when what we would tell partakes of the wonderful. 
Who can truthfully describe a juggler's trick ? Who 
would hesitate to affirm that a watch, which never left 
the eyesight for an instant, was broken by the juggler 
on an anvil ; or that a handkerchief was burned before 
our eyes ? We all know the juggler does not break 
the watch, and does not burn the handkerchief. We 
watched most closely the juggler's right hand, while 
the trick was done with his left. The one minute cir- 
cumstance has been omitted that would have converted 
the trick into no-trick. It is likely to be the same in 
the accounts of the most wonderful phenomena of 
spiritualism." 

If we desire a concrete instance of this omission of 
an important detail, we may turn once more to Dr. 
Furness's narrative. Certain highly intelligent ob- 
servers had described to him the marvelous accomplish- 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM 159 

merits of a Boston medium ; and this is liis own ac- 
count : " There are two tables in the room of seance, 
at one of which sits the medium, at the other, the 
visitor. The visitor at his table writes his question in 
pencil at the top of a long slip of paper, and, after 
folding over several times the portion of the slip on 
which his question is written, gums it down with muci- 
lage and hands it to the medium, who thereupon places 
on the folded and gummed portion his left hand, and 
in a few minutes with his right hand writes down an- 
swers to the concealed questions ; these answers are 
marvels of pertinency, and prove beyond a cavil the 
clairvoyant or spiritual powers of the medium." Dr. 
Furness went to the medium, prepared his slip of 
paper about as described, and thus continues : " As 
soon as he took his seat, and laid the strip on his table 
before him, I rose and approached the table so as to 
keep my paper still in sight ; the row of books entirely 
intercepted my view of it. The medium instantly 
motioned to me to return to my seat, and, I think, told 
me to do so. I obeyed, and as I did so could not re- 
press a profound sigh. Why had no one ever told me 
of that row of books ? " 

III 

I have thus passed in review a series of facts and 
considerations in pursuance of the general inquiry as to 
why the manifestations produced in evidence of spirit 
agency deceive, and as to the origin of the vast testi- 
mony in favor of spiritualistic marvels. It is not 
necessary for the purposes of the psychological discus- 
sion to demonstrate that all such manifestations are 



160 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

fraudulent ; it is not even necessary — although with 
limitless time and energy it might be desirable — to 
examine all of the various kinds of manifestations which 
the ingenuity of mediums has devised, or which have been 
presented through mediumistic agency.^ All that is 
necessary is to examine a sufficient number of manifesta- 
tions of acknowledged standing and repute among spir- 
itualists, — manifestations, be it clearly understood, 
which have actually brought hundreds and thousands 
of converts to its ranks, which have been persistently 
brought forward as indisputable evidence of supernatural 
agency — and to show that in reference to these, actual 
and extensive deception has taken place. It would not 
be proper to declare that at this point the psychologist's 
interest ends ; for the centre of interest in such pro- 
blems may shift from one point to another. The central 
point in the present discussion, however, is not what is 
the evidence in favor of the spiritualistic hypothesis 
logically worth, — although the considerations here pre- 
sented have obvious and radical bearings upon that 
question. If that were our quest, we should put the 

^ I desire not to seem to overlook the fact that there are manifesta- 
tions presented by Spiritualism of a different character from those 
above considered. There are, for example, the inspirational messages 
revealed through the medium when in a trance-like condition, and which 
are supposed to rest for their proof of supernatural origin on the testi- 
mony of the medium or upon their internal content. The psychologi- 
cal status of these and similar mediumistic phenomena must be inter- 
preted in the light of our knowledge of hypnotic and allied conditions, of 
automatic writing, of modifications of conscious and subconscious person- 
ality. I do not consider that the evidence which these phenomena 
contribute towards the establishment of the probability of the truth of 
the spiritualistic hypothesis at all affects the estimate arrived at in the 
main discussion. That there are other than the physical phenomeiia 
of Spiritualism should, however, not be overlooked. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM 161 

spiritualists upon tlie defensive ; for tlie burden rests 
upon them to show the inadequacy of the natural ex- 
planation of the phenomena, and to present the special 
facts that j)oint to the correctness of the spiritualistic 
as opposed to other explanations. We may recognize, 
in passing, to what sorry excuses they are driven in its 
defense : wi'iting, they are driven to explain, is best 
produced in the dark, because dark is " negative," and 
light is " positive " ; if the spirit that appears resembles 
the medium, that is an effect of the materializing pro- 
cess ; if a piece of muslin is found in the medium's 
cabinet (and obviously used as drapery in the materi- 
alizations), it is supposed to have been brought by the 
spirits to clothe their nakedness, or that the spirit which 
had brought the muslin "had to vanish so quickly 
that it had no time to dematerialize the muslin ; " 
if writing does not appear when the slates are looked 
at, that is because the " magnetism " of the eye inter- 
feres with this spiritual process of writing ; and did 
not Slade receive an express command from the spirits 
forbidding him, on penalty of cutting off all communi- 
cation, to attempt to write on sealed slates? Some 
even claim that fraud and genuine manifestations go 
hand in hand, or that the former are the work of evil 
spirits counterfeiting conjuring tricks. A prominent 
spiritualist openly announces that Slade "now often 
cheats with an almost infantile audacity and naivete, 
while at the same or the next seance, with the same 
investigators," genuine spiritualistic phenomena occur ; 
while another disciple holds that the true spirit in 
which to approach the study is an " entire willingness 
to be deceived." Surely there is no duty resting upon 



162 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

scientific men to consider the claims of a system that 
resorts to such idle and extravagant hypotheses, and 
that fosters and prospers in such a moral atmosphere. 

We may therefore profitably confine our attention to 
the psychological lessons to be drawn from the record of 
fraud and deception which the exploitation of Spirit- 
ualism has produced.^ When the day comes when the 
manifestations above considered shall be definitely con- 
ceded to have a natural explanation along the general 
lines here presented, and the spiritualists shall have 
taken refuge in other and distinctively different mani- 
festations, then it may become advisable to prepare a 
revised account of the psychology of Spiritualism. 

There remains an important series of considerations 
that form an essential factor in the psychological com- 
prehension of the phenomena of Spiritualism ; this is 
the effect of bias and prepossession. When by one 

1 There is a minor problem of psycholog-ical interest in regard to the 
fraud apparent in these manifestations, that is worthy of consideration : 
namely, the motives for such fraud. That greed for gain and notoriety 
constitute two of the main inducements is obvious enough ; that the 
latter is a far more widespread and variable mental inducement than 
we ordinarily realize, has been shown by the cases in which fraud 
has been detected. La addition we must recognize the existence of de- 
ception as the expression of a deep-seated instinct abnormally present 
in not a few persons. It is deception for the love of imposing upon 
humanity, mingled somewhat with a love of the conspicuousness and 
interest which the deceiver's position brings with it ; and this often 
exists where the motives for it cannot be accurately determined. Cases 
of deception on the part of children, on the part of those who present 
suspicions of the hysterical temperament, and cases of so-called disin- 
terested deception, have been collected in sufficient number to make the 
criticisms which are advanced against professional mediums quite as 
cogent in the case of unpaid and private mediums. I may refer to the 
discussion of the subject by Mr. Podmore. Studies in Psychical Bc' 
search, p. 185, sqq. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM 163 

means or anotlier a strong faith in the reality of spirit- 
ualistic manifestations has been induced ; when the 
critical attitude gives place to a state of extreme emo- 
tional tension ; when, perhaps, special griefs and trials 
give undue fervor to the desire for a material proof of 
life after death, of communion with the dear departed ; 
when the convert becomes a defendant of the faith, 
anxious to strengthen the proofs of his own conviction, 
— then we have no longer mere unintentional lapses of 
observation and memory to deal with, but actual men- 
tal blindness to obvious fraud and natural explanations ; 
then caution is thrown to the winds and marvels are 
reported that are the result of expectant attention and 
imagination, or of real illusion and hallucination. The 
blamelessness that may be conceded for one's mystifica- 
tion by conjuring performances cannot be extended to the 
present class of experiences ; here it is not unusualness 
of external arrangements that forms the main factor in 
the deception, but the abnormal condition of the ob- 
server's mind. The materialization seances offer a 
sufficient example of this form of manifestation. To 
recognize a departed friend in the thinly disguised form 
of the medium is most naturally interpreted as a mark 
of weak insight or of strong prejudice. " Again and 
again," writes Dr. Furness, " men have led round the 
circles the materialized spirits of their wives and intro- 
duced them to each visitor in turn ; fathers have taken 
round their daughters, and I have seen widows sob in 
the arms of their dead husbands. Testimony such as 
this staggers me. Have I been smitten with color- 
blindness ? Before me, as far as I can detect, stands 
the very medium herself, in shape, size, form, and fea- 



164 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

tare true to a line, and yet, one after another, honest 
men and women at my side, within ten minutes of each 
other, assert that she is the absolute counterpart of 
their nearest and dearest friend ; nay, that she is that 
friend. It is as incomprehensible to me as the asser- 
tion that the heavens are green, and the leaves of the 
trees deep blue. Can it be that the faculty of observa- 
tion and comparison is rare, and that our features are 
really vague and misty to our best friends ? Is it that 
the medium exercises some mesmeric influence on her 
visitors, who are thus made to accept the faces which 
she wiUs them to see ? Or is it, after all, only the dim 
light and a fresh illustration of la nuit tous les chats 
sont gris .^ " In the confessions of an exposed medium 
we read : " The first seance I held, after it became 
known to the Rochester people that I was a medium, a 
gentleman from Chicago recognized his daughter Lizzie 
in me after I had covered my small mustache with a 
piece of flesh-colored cloth, and reduced the size of my 
face with a shawl I had purposely hung up in the back 
of the cabinet." With such powerful magicians as an 
expectant interest and a strong prepossession, the realm 
of the marvelous is easily entered; but the evidence 
thus accumulated may be said to have about the same 
scientific value as the far more interesting entertain- 
ments of the " Thousand and One Nights." " Sergeant 
Cox," Mr. Podmore tells us, "adduced the hallucina- 
tory feeling of a missing limb in proof of a spiritual 
body ; and a writer in the ' Spiritualist,' ' not yet con- 
vinced of the spiritualistic theory,' could even pronounce 
the after-images produced by gazing at a straw hat to 
be ' independent of any known human agency.' From 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM 165 

all of which it may be gathered that the conscientious 
spiritualist, when on marvels bent, did not display a 
frugal mind." Such opinions certainly justify Mr. 
Podmore's remark that there are spiritualists, " not a 
few, who would be capable of testifying, if their prepos- 
sessions happened to point that way, that they had 
seen the cow jump over the moon ; and would refer for 
corroborative evidence to the archives of the nursery." 
It is natural to suppose that prepossession of such 
intensity could occur only amongst the less intelligent 
and less discerning portions of mankind ; but to a con- 
siderable extent, and certainly in sporadic instances, 
this is not the case. The distinguished naturalist who 
shares with Darwin the honor of contributing to 
modern thought the conceptions of evolution, in his 
ardent advocacy of Spiritualism, has recorded his assent 
to the belief that professional conjurers, performing 
at the Crystal Palace in London, could not accomplish 
their tricks without supernatural aid. With peculiar 
obliviousness to the double-edgedness of his remark, he 
writes : "If you think it all juggling, point out where 
the difference lies between it and mediumistic pheno- 
mena." The same prepossession renders him so imper- 
vious to the actual status of the evidence for Spiritualism 
as to permit him to record so preposterous a statement 
as the following: The physical phenomena of Spirit- 
ualism " have all, or nearly all, been before the world 
for twenty years ; the theories and explanations of 
reviewers and critics do not touch them, or in any way 
satisfy any sane man who has repeatedly witnessed 
them ; they have been tested and examined by skeptics 
of every grade of incredulity, men in every way quali- 



166 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

fied to detect Imposture or to discover natural causes, 
— trained physicists, medical men, lawyers, and men of 
business, — but in every case the investigators have 
either retired baffled, or become converts." And in 
the latest utterances of the same authority the failure 
to credit the marvels of Spiritualism is put down along 
with the equal neglect of phrenology, as among the 
signal failures of our "wonderful century." If any 
further instances be required of the astounding effects 
of bias and prepossession in matters spiritualistic, the 
vast literature of the subject may be referred to as a 
sad but instructive monument of its influence. 

IV 

The consideration of the effects of a prepossession 
in favor of a belief in spirit-agency leads naturally to 
a consideration of the origin of the belief. This tend- 
ency to believe in the return to earth of the spirits of 
the departed, is probably to be viewed as a form of 
expression of the primitive animism that dominates 
savage philosophy, that pervades the historical develop- 
ment of religion and of science, and that crops out in 
various ways throughout all grades of civilization and 
all levels of society. Combined with it is an equally 
fundamental love for the marvelous, and a more or 
less suppressed belief in the significance of the ob- 
scure, the mysterious, the occult. These belief -tenden- 
cies, accordingly, have an anthropological significance 
and an historical continuity which Mr. Lang thus pre- 
sents : " These instances prove that, from the Austra- 
lian blacks in the Bush, who hear raps when the spirits 
come, to ancient Egypt, and thence to Greece, and 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM 167 

last, in our own time, and in a London suburb, similar 
experiences real or imaginary are explained by the 
same hypothesis. No ' survival ' can be more odd 
and striking, none more illustrative of the permanence, 
in human nature, of certain elements. To examine 
these psychological curiosities may, or may not, be 
' useful,' but, at the lowest, the study may rank as a 
branch of mythology or folk-lore." Mr. Tylor fully 
concords with this view : " The received spiritualistic 
theory," he says, " belongs to the philosophy of sav- 
ages. . . . Suppose a wild North American Indian 
looking on at a spirit-seance in London. As to the 
presence of disembodied spirits, manifesting themselves 
by raps, noises, voices, and other physical actions, the 
savage would be perfectly at home in the proceedings ; 
for such things are part and parcel of his recognized 
system of nature." Mr. Podmore's comment upon the 
spiritualistic hypothesis expresses a kindred thought. 
" As the peasant referred the movement of the steam- 
engine to the only motive force with which he was 
acquainted, and supposed that there were horses inside, 
so the spiritualists, recognizing, as they thought, in the 
phenomena the manifestations of will and intelligence 
not apparently those of any person visibly present, 
invoked the agency of the spirits of the dead. We 
can hardly call this belief an hypothesis or an explana- 
tion ; it seems indeed at its outset to have been little 
more than the instinctive utterance of primitive an- 
imism." 

The strongly rooted, anti-logical tendencies of our 
nature, thus indicated, come to the surface in various 
and unexpected ways, and give rise to views and cults 



168 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

that have much in common with the manifestations 
and beliefs of Spiritualism. It is this very commu- 
nity that forms one of the recognizable stigmata of 
such movements ; everywhere there is an appeal to the 
yearning for the mysterious, for special signs and 
omens that may reinforce the personal interpretation 
of the events of the universe, and reveal the tran- 
scendence of the limitations of natural law. These 
movements, too, seem at different epochs to flare up 
and spread into true epidemics, utterly consuming all 
inherent foundations of logic and common sense, in the 
white heat of the emotional interest with which they 
advance. It seems to matter little how trivial, how 
absurd, how vulgar, how ignorant, or how improbable 
the manifestations may be, the passion for belief in 
their mysterious origin sets aU aside. Why returning 
spirits should devote their energies to playing tam- 
bourines, and conjuring with slates, to Indian dances, 
and vapid, bombastic, and ungrammatical " inspira- 
tional " speeches, seems not even to be considered. It 
requires as little evidence and as ridiculous evidence 
to prove a spirit to a spiritualist as it did to prove 
a witch to a witch-finder. Those whose feelings are 
not appealed to by the doctrines of Spiritualism will 
assuredly never be attracted by its logic. 

The psychologist who observes the natural history 
of the belief in Spiritualism, — its origin, and mode of 
propagation, its blossoming and fruitage, is naturally 
led to consider the nature of its decline. That it 
declines rapidly in the presence of newer rivals for 
popular favor, appealing to much the same mental 
and emotional traits, and therefore finding a similar 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM 169 

constituency, has been made evident in the vicissitudes 
of its career. It suffered considerably at the period 
when the meteoric showers of Theosophy passed over 
our planet ; it is subject to the waning of interest that 
always accompanies familiarity, and that makes even 
the most exciting experiences pale with time. Such 
familiarity also gives opportunity for the return of a 
calm and critical investigative attitude, such as the 
last two decades, in particular, have brought about. 
That such investigation is destined seriously to influ- 
ence opinion, and eventually to triumph over error and 
superstition, no one with confidence in the ultimate 
rationality of mankind will be inclined to doubt. In 
the case of Spiritualism, logic will find a worthy ally in 
the more discerning development of the moral sensi- 
bilities which true culture always brings with it. When 
it is realized that a system that aims to instruct men in 
regard to beliefs appealing most earnestly and deeply 
to the human heart appears in the light of exact in- 
vestigation as a tottering framework, held together by 
gross fraud, covered over with innocent self-deception, 
but also with vulgar sham ; when it is realized that 
under the shelter of such a system men and women all 
over our land are daily and hourly preying upon the 
credulity of simple-minded folk, and obtaining a live- 
lihood by means for which the law provides punish- 
ment, — the moral indignation following upon this 
realization will impart vigor to the protest against 
such practices, which a mere sense of their irration- 
ality would fail to incite. The moral and aesthetic 
aversion which many of the practices and tenets of 
Spiritualism arouses in those whose ideals are sound 



170 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

and steadfast may prove to be a more serious menace 
to the spread of the belief, a more potent source of its 
decay, than even its inherent inconsistencies and im- 
probabilities. 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 

Important periods in the history of science are as 
likely to be characterized by changes in attitude to- 
wards the accepted body of knowledge, as by the ex- 
tension of its realm through new discoveries. The 
contrast between the undeveloped and the advanced 
stages of a science is as well realized by noting the 
totally different mode in which facts are viewed, as by 
observing the vast increase in the range of recorded 
fact. The alchemist and the chemist have far more in 
common in the way of operations and material than 
in their conceptions of the purposes and the method of 
their pursuits. The astrologer and the astronomer are 
again most characteristically differentiated by their 
motives and point of view ; both observe the positions 
of planet and star, and calculate orbits and phases 
and oppositions ; but nothing is more absurdly ir- 
relevant to the astronomer's purpose than the hope of 
predicting the fortunes of men. A more modern ex- 
ample of a similar relation is that between phrenology 
and the physiological doctrine of the localization of 
functions in the brain. And alchemist, astrologer, and 
phrenologist have this in common : that they aimed at 
immediately practical ends. The one hoped to create 
wealth, the other to foretell and control fate, and the 
third to insure success by discovering the earmarks of 
natural gifts. They distorted the facts of nature, and 



172 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

in the narrow pursuit of a practical goal, substituted 
for realities their own fanciful theories, or the elabora- 
tions of their defective logic. Science advances most 
favorably when the best energies are devoted to a com- 
prehension of fundamental principles and to the accu- 
mulation of data under the guidance of the interests to 
which these principles give rise ; and when the work 
proceeds with the confidence that, more indirectly, but 
more surely, will the richest practical benefits thus 
accrue. The marked contrast exemplified in the his- 
tory of chemistry and astronomy, and in a more limited 
way of brain physiology, make it proper to speak of 
the very different pursuits with which they were asso- 
ciated as their antecedents and not as early stages of 
their own development. Inthnate as may be the rela- 
tions between the two historically, the one represents 
but the forerunner of the other ; it indicates in what 
direction interest guided thought before that changed 
interest appeared, which made possible the germina- 
tion and growth of the true science. Only when the 
weeds had been rooted out did the flowers begin to 
thrive. 



The history of hypnotism furnishes another and a 
varied illustration of a similar relation. If we accept as 
the essential fact of modern hypnotism the demonstra- 
tion of an altered nervous and mental state, in which sug- 
gestibility is increased to a quite abnormal degree ; in 
which, accordingly, functions not ordinarily under the 
control of voluntary effort become so controllable, and 
there are induced simple and complex modifications of 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 173 

physiological and psychological activities, — then the 
condition of opinion that prevailed prior to the recog- 
nition of the true significance of the phenomena in 
question, the false and unfounded and mystical con- 
ceptions concerning them, may properly be grouped 
together as the antecedents of hypnotism. The entire 
aspect of the problem under the one regime is strik- 
ingly different from its appearance under the reign of 
the successor. 

In the presentation, from the point of view of modern 
hypnotism, of the more important steps in the tortuous 
and laborious transition from unbridled speculation and 
fantastic practices to a rational and consistent body 
of truth, a twofold interest may be maintained; the one, 
in the fluctuation of opinion antecedent to the scientific 
recognition of hypnotism, and the other in the dra- 
matis personce concerned in this history and their 
contributions, great and small, for good or for ill, 
to that gradual and irregular change of attitude the 
tested residue of which modern hypnotism embodies. 
The latter interest will form a helpful guide for selec- 
tion among the complex sequence of events with which 
we shall have to deal. Accounts of the well-established 
phenomena of hypnotism are so readily accessible, that 
it seems sufficient to emphasize these two fundamental 
points — the ultimate recognition of an altered psycho- 
physiological state, and of the dominant part which 
suggestion plays in the development of hypnotic pheno- 
mena — and to accept them as furnishing the principles 
according to which the survey of the antecedents of 
hypnotism is to be conducted. 

It will appear that much of the conflict which the 



174 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

present tale unfolds is the conflict between tlie rational 
investigation of intelligible facts and the unwarranted 
attempts at an explanation of alleged miracles, — 
a phase of the conflict between science and mysti- 
cism. The imperfectly understood is apt to be ex- 
plained by the still more obscure ; totally imaginary 
forms of energy are called upon to account for poorly 
observed effects; and so the mystery deepens, super- 
stition spreads, and charlatanism finds a fertile field 
for its display. This conflict in the present instance 
is by no means confined to the past ; the mystical 
and the miraculous, or at least the unintelligible side 
of hypnotic phenomena still finds its exponents. Ac- 
counts of observations and experiments purporting to 
demonstrate that hypnotism not only presents hyper- 
sesthesia and exaggerated forms of mental activity, but 
transcends all normal psychological processes and re- 
veals a hidden world in which other forces and other 
modes of mental communication freely appear, are 
widely circulated and sometimes with the authority of 
names of repute. But the more discerning, the more 
exact, and the more logical students of hypnotism, 
cannot accept such observations, and have often been 
able to point out the unmistakable sources of error 
which gave rise to them. The shrewdness of hyp- 
notized subjects, the unconscious suggestion of the 
operator, looseness of observation and theoretical bias, 
exercise the same influence for error to-day as they 
presented in the antecedents of hypnotism. 

In reading the story of former opinion, it is of advan- 
tage to keep in mind the well-established facts regard- 
ing hypnotism, not alone for the sake of recognizing 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 175 

what is important and what unessential, what are the 
instructive and what the irrelevant facts and details, 
but also for the equal advantage of securing data for 
the interpretation of phenomena, which in the absence 
of present-day knowledge, and in the misleading 
accounts current at the time, naturally gave rise to 
extravagant forms of explanation. Our knowledge 
of insanity, hysteria, and trance-conditions, of the in- 
fluence of the mind over the body, of the nature of 
illusion and hallucination, of prepossession and sugges- 
tion, shed a strong light upon religious ecstasy, upon 
demon-possession, upon cures by shrines and relics, or 
by the king's touch, upon the contagion of psychic 
epidemics, upon the action of magnetized tree or " mes- 
merized " water, upon the performances of " sensitives " 
and somnambulists, and the sensational scenes enacted 
about the " baquet." Our historical survey might ac- 
cordingly include an account of the states of insensi- 
bility and of the potent power of suggestion, which 
occurred in connection with the religious observances 
in the practices of ancient civilizations, and have 
always formed, as they still form, a characteristic cult 
among primitive peoples. That such states, closely 
corresponding to the hypnotic trance, are induced for 
magical purposes among savages is more than probable ; 
equally clear is it that interspersed through the vener- 
able record of magic and witchcraft and ecstasy and 
exorcism and miraculous cures, are accounts of states, 
induced usually by religious fervor, which are strongly 
suggestive of some of the characteristics of the hyp- 
notic condition. But in the interests of unity and 
brevity it will be best to limit attention to those 



176 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

ancestors of hypnotism, of whose methods and practices 
we have fairly definite information. More especially 
does the career of Mesmer supply the most favorable 
starting-point of the survey ; yet some notice should 
be taken of those who preceded him in achieving repu- 
tation as healers of disease. 

II 

One of the best known of these healers was Valen- 
tine Greaterick (or Greatrakes), who was born in Ire- 
land in 1628, and who came to England (about 1665) 
by invitation of Lord Conway, upon a mission thus 
quaintly expressed: to cure "that excellent lady of 
his, the pains of whose head^ as great and as unparal- 
leled as they are, have not made her more known and 
admired at home and abroad, than have her other 
endowments." Lady Conway seems to have been in- 
tensely devoted to mystical pursuits, and assembled at 
Eagley Castle such men as Greatrakes, Kev. Joseph 
Glanvill, F. R. S., author of Sadducissimus Triumpha- 
tus, Dr. Henry Moore, the Cambridge Platonist, and 
others of whom Mr. Lang speaks as " an unofficial but 
active society for psychical research, as that study 
existed in the seventeenth century." They told tales 
of " levitation " and witchcraft and the movements of 
bodies by unseen agencies, at all of which one or the 
other had been an eyewitness ; and Greatrakes seems 
to have taken as prominent a part in these as in the 
healing proceedings. Greatrakes was called to his 
career by a special indication of providence — " he 
heard a voyce within him (audible to none else) en- 
couraging to the tryals ; and afterwards to correct his 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 177 

unbelief the voice aforesaid added this signe, that his 
right hand should he dead^ and that the stroaking of 
his left arme should recover it again, the events 
whereof were fully verified by him three nights together 
by a successive infirmity and cure of his arme." While 
he failed to cure Lady Conway's headaches " he wrought 
a few miracles of healing among rural invalids," and 
seems to have been particularly successful with nervous 
complaints. *' I saw him," writes a contemporary, 
" put his Finger into the Eares of a man who was very 
thick of Hearing, and immediately he heard me when I 
asked him very softly severall questions." 

The status of the medical science of the day is well 
reflected in the comment of Henry Stubbe, physician 
at Stratford upon Avon, from whose contemporary 
account our knowledge of Greatrakes is obtained. For 
explanation of the cures, he suggests " that God had 
bestowed upon Mr. Greatarick a peculiar Tempera- 
ment, or composed his Body of some particular Fer- 
ments, the Effluvia whereof, being introduced sometimes 
by a light, sometimes by a violent Friction, should 
restore the Temperament of the Debilitated parts, re- 
invigorate the Blood, and dissipate all heterogeneous 
Ferments out of the Bodies of the Diseased, by the 
Eyes, Nose, Mouth, Hand and Feet." However crude 
may seem this cure by the " Precipitation of the Morbif- 
ique Ferment," the theoretical position of Mesmer is 
not less hypothetical, dogmatic, and gratuitous. Indeed, 
to Greatrakes's and his biographer's credit, it should 
be noted that they recognized the distinction between 
functional and organic complaints ; that Mr. Greatarick 
" meddles " only with such diseases as " have their 



178 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

Essence either in the masse of Blood and Spirit (or 
nervous liquors) or in the particular Temperament of 
the parts of the Body," that he cures no disease 
" wherein there is a decay of Nature." " This is a con- 
fessed truth by him, he refusing still to touch the Eyes 
of such as their sight has quite perished." None the 
less his cures were regarded as miraculous, and Dr. 
Stubbe tells us that " as there is but one Mr. Great- 
aricks, so there is but one Sunne " ; and to dispel in- 
credulity in regard to these wonders, he adds : " We 
are all Indians and Salvages in what we have not ac- 
customed our senses : What was conjuring in the last 
age is Mathematiques in this. And if we do but con- 
sider the sole effects of Gun-powder, as it is severally 
to be used, and revolve with ourselves what we would 
have thought if we had been told those Prodigies, and 
not seen them ; will we think it strange if men think 
the actions of extraordinary Ferments impossible ? " 
But to leave the " Ferments " for the recorded account 
of what was done, we can only note that Greatrakes's 
methods consisted mainly of strokings and passes and 
in driving the pains from one point to another until 
they went out at the fingers or toes. There is nothing 
recorded that definitely suggests the production of the 
hypnotic state ; but direct suggestion, reinforced by 
manipulations, obviously had much to do with the 
cures. They clearly approximate more closely to the 
faith-cure methods of to-day than to the phenomena of 
hypnotism. 

The latter half of the eighteenth century seems to 
have offered social, intellectual, and political conditions 
peculiarly favorable to the success of fantastic schemers, 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 179 

of propagandists of strange philosophies, and adver- 
tisers of supernatural procedures for short-circuiting 
the road to health, wealth, knowledge, and immortality. 
In this period there appeared Swedenborg's inspired 
revelations and philosophic cult ; Cagliostro's extrava- 
gant claims of personal power and bold-faced impos- 
tures ; Schrepfer, who combined with Masonic mysteries 
a striking anticipation of the materializing seances of 
modern spiritualism ; Gassner, the priest, exorcist, and 
healer ; and finally Mesmer, the founder of animal 
magnetism, and through it the parent of an endless 
progeny of unproved and unprovable systems, and of 
equally irrational practices. 

It is worth while to consider for a moment the career 
of Gassner, if for no other reason than that Mesmer 
witnessed Gassner's procedures, and that their methods 
have some points in common, — in particular the calling 
out of acute symptoms, or " a crisis," as a means of 
cure. Johann Joseph Gassner, a Suabian priest, ap- 
peared as a curer of disease about 1773 ; he regarded 
most maladies as of Satanic origin, and attempted 
cures by driving out the demon of disease by appeal to 
divine agency. After inquiry regarding the nature of 
the complaint and its symptoms, he would urge the 
patient to have faith, and perhaps would offer a prayer 
for his recovery ; he would then call out the various 
symptoms of pain, stiffness, weakness, and the like, and 
at the word "Cesser" these symptoms would disappear. 
" Cesset ista Debilitas,^^ — the patient becomes as 
strong and as active as though he had never been sick. 
'"'' Modo adsit Fehris tantum in Mann et Brachio 
dextro^^ — the right hand becomes cold and numb, and 



180 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

trembles, the pulse in this arm is rapid, feverish, and 
strong, but slow and normal in the left. " Cesset in 
ista Manu et adeat sinistram,'^ — the left arm now be- 
comes as the right had been, and the pulse of the right 
is now normal ; and so the treatment proceeds, accom- 
panied by the invocation, " Prcecipio hoc in nomine 
JesuP This process of alternation of pain and its 
remission is continued, until at length the patient is 
dismissed as cured. The status of Gassner's cures, 
except for their more pronounced religious character, 
is much the same as those of Greatrakes ; both exhibit 
the effects of suggestion, but neither recognized the 
process of suggestion, nor gives evidence of having 
produced an abnormal condition. This, however, is by 
no means excluded; and Greatrakes's account of the 
insensibility of his own arm, as well as the similar 
state induced in his patients by Gassner, indicate a 
high degree of suggestibility. 

Ill 

Friedrich Anton Mesmer was born in Iznang, on the 
Lake of Constance, May 23, 1734 ; destined by his 
parents for the church, he turned from the study of 
theology to that of law, and again changed to medicine. 
He graduated as a physician from the University of 
Vienna in 1776, and in his doctor's thesis upon " The 
Influence of the Planets on the Human Body," he 
attempted to revive the underlying doctrines of astro- 
logy from a medical point of view. He defined the 
" quality of animal bodies, rendering them suscept- 
ible to the influence of heaven and earth," as " ani- 
mal magnetism ; " and regarded the action involved as 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 181 

analogous to that of the moon upon the ebb and flow of 
the tide. The fluctuations and periodicities of disease 
he sought to produce artificially, and therefore called 
his theory the " imitative theory," the object being to 
imitate the ups and downs of nature. He records his 
first practical test on the 28th of July, 1774, when he 
placed magnets upon the chest and feet of his patient, 
a young lady, who was suffering from a variety of 
morbid symptoms. Shortly thereafter " she felt inter- 
nally a painful streaming of a very fine substance going 
now here and now there, but finally settling in the 
lower part of her body, and freeing her from all further 
attacks for six hours." Somewhat later, when the same 
patient chanced to be suffering from one of her attacks, 
and was lying unconscious, she responded by violent 
movements to the slightest touch of Mesmer, but re- 
mained entirely unresponsive to the manipulations of 
a bystander. One of six cups was then chosen by 
Mesmer's visitor to be impressed with magnetic pro- 
perties. Contact with this cup, which Mesmer had 
touched, produced in the patient movements of her 
hands and expressions of pain. Mesmer's influence 
made itself felt at a distance of eight steps, and even 
when a third person stood between the two. These 
simple observations were the humble beginnings of the 
practices of animal magnetism. 

The details of Mesmer's early doings are of special 
value, for in them we may expect to discover the true 
nature of the man and his system ; our knowledge of 
them is derived mainly from the account, written some 
thirty-five years after the events, by a not too discern- 
ing eyewitness. They give a sufficiently definite picture 



182 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

of his manner and methods. Magnets and electric 
machines, passes and strokings, fantastic dress and 
equally fantastic manipulations, he utilized even before 
he became well known. The method was always the 
same ; calling out pains and paroxysms and crises, and 
in turn allaying the symptoms thus aroused until the 
patient was pronounced cured. From the first, too, he 
was anxious to secure the recognition of authoritative 
bodies of scientific men. Early in 1775, Mesmer pro- 
posed his theory for acceptance to several learned 
societies, but received no encouragement. His use of 
magnets (which he probably derived from the astrono- 
mer. Hell) had aroused the opposition of his fellow- 
practitioners, and his professed cure of a proteg^ of 
Maria Theresa involved him in a somewhat unseemly 
dispute, ultimately necessitating his departure from 
Vienna. In February, 1778, he came to Paris, where 
he entered upon a remarkable but brief career, termi- 
nating somewhat abruptly in 1784. 

Mesmer has left us a narrative of his doings during 
the first three of these years — a record devoted almost 
exclusively to a wearisome account of his controversies 
with the various learned societies of Paris. He ap- 
pealed to the French Academy of Sciences and to the 
Royal Medical Society, announcing a most wonderful 
physical discovery, to describe which suitable words 
were as yet lacking. Mesmer wished these societies to 
sanction his discovery, not to act as judges of its truth, 
of which he says there can be no reasonable doubt. 
He offered them a series of dogmatic propositions, set- 
ting forth the nature of animal magnetism, and appar- 
ently desired the cures to be considered a subordinate 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 183 

part of tlie issue. He was, however, continuously en- 
gaged in curing disease. His most valuable convert 
was M. Deslon, a member of the Medical Faculty of 
Paris, a man of considerable influence, who at once 
espoused Mesmer's cause with unlimited enthusiasm. 
He invited a dozen of his colleagues to meet Mesmer 
at dinner, and had read to them an exposition of the 
system of animal magnetism. The company seem not 
to have been very deeply impressed ; for it was with 
difficulty that Deslon induced three of them to asso- 
ciate themselves with him in an investigation ; and they 
soon deserted him, when their requests for simple, un- 
ambiguous tests and their explanation of the observed 
effect as due to an overstimulated imagination, were 
alike disregarded. The point at issue in these tests 
seems to have been whether Mesmer in his own person 
possessed an influence or magnetic radiation, which 
brought him into rapport with his magnetically sensi- 
tive subjects ; but Mesmer apparently regarded any 
test that reflected the skeptical attitude of the investi- 
gators as unbecomingly suspicious. Deslon, however, 
remained a staunch believer in the new system, and 
defended its cause before the Faculty of Medicine, 
dwelling upon the honor of having it presented to 
them, and the eternal glory they would merit by accept- 
ing " the most important discovery at which the human 
mind had ever marveled." But the Faculty voted to 
reject the propositions, and Deslon lost his seat in their 
body. 

This adverse action, together with Mesmer's threat 
to leave France, seems to have swelled the enthusiasm 
in his behalf to enormous proportions. He tells us 



184 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

that he received a letter from the queen urging him 
not to shirk his duty to mankind by leaving France at 
this juncture, that he was visited by a high official in 
behalf of the king offering him an annuity of 20,000 
livres, with an additional 10,000 livres for the rental 
of an establishment for operating his cures. Mesmer 
insisted upon the formal and irrevocable admission of 
the existence and utility of his discovery as prelim- 
inary to all negotiations, and demanded, in addition to 
the annuity, the gift of an estate ; but this was a step 
farther than royal protection would venture. 

Our information regarding the latter portion of 
Mesmer's Parisian career is meagre. In 1781 Deslon 
published his work on " Animal Magnetism," in which 
he repeats with undiminished enthusiasm his praises of 
Mesmer, describes the marvelous cures he has wit- 
nessed and prophesies the eventual triumph of the 
system. Shortly thereafter Mesmer went to the Spa ; 
Deslon remained in Paris and began to treat patients 
by animal magnetism and with great success. Pie 
formed a special private class of educated men and 
women, from each of whom he received ten louis d'or 
per month. Upon hearing of this, Mesmer hurried 
back to Paris and found his former adherents divided 
into Mesmerists and Deslonists. He then (October, 
1782) denounced Deslon as one who had betrayed his 
secrets and was misrepresenting the system. Through 
the efforts of friends, an inner circle — the first of the 
" Loges d'Harmonie " — was formed, consisting of one 
hundred members, each of whom paid one hundred 
louis d'or for the privilege of hearing Mesmer's exposi- 
tion of his whole secret. Dissensions and discussions 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 185 

continued to arise ; one of his hearers said " that those 
who know the secret are in greater doubt than those 
who are ignorant of it ; " and M. Berthellot, the chem- 
ist, who in paying his fee reserved the right of criti- 
cism, was so irritated at the pedantic and ridiculous 
treatment to which he was subjected, that he upset the 
" baquet " and left the room in a violent rage. Matters 
went on in this way, with frequent propositions of a 
scientific examination, and as frequent refusals on the 
part of Mesmer to have further dealings with scientific 
societies, until, in 1784, the famous commission was 
appointed by the throne. 

This commission was composed of four members of 
the Faculty of Medicine, MM. Borie (who at his death 
was succeeded by M. Majault), Sallin, Darcet, Guillo- 
tin, to whom were added five members of the Academy 
of Sciences, MM. Franklin, Leroy, Bailly, Lavoisier, 
and de Bory. Their report describes in scrupulous 
and careful detail everything that they witnessed at the 
house of Deslon, who carefully and circumstantially 
assured them that Mesmer's procedures and his own 
were quite the same ; and who allowed them the great- 
est freedom in examinations and tests. They tried 
the treatment themselves, but felt no effects. They 
emphasized the fact that public performances in which 
excitement and contagion have full play are more suc- 
cessful than private ones, and that the subjects most 
easily influenced are to be found among the ignorant 
rather than among the educated classes. They blind- 
folded one of their subjects, and pretended to per- 
form the usual passes, while they really did nothing ; 
yet the expected results ensued. It was believed that 



186 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

when the subject came in contact with a tree that had 
been magnetized, the symptoms of an approaching 
crisis would be manifested ; accordingly they had a tree 
in Franklin's garden magnetized, but their subject 
went to four other trees and at each exhibited the 
usual phenomena. From such experiments, ingen- 
iously devised and varied, the commissioners concluded 
that the effects witnessed were due to an overstimu- 
lated imagination, to an anticipation of the result, to 
excitement and contagion. " Let us represent to our- 
selves," they say, "the situation of a person of the 
lower class, and in consequence ignorant, attacked 
with a distemper and desirous of a cure, introduced 
with some degree of ceremony to a large company 
partly composed of physicians, where an operation is 
performed upon him, totally new, and from which he 
persuades himself beforehand that he is about to ex- 
perience prodigious effects. Let us add to this that 
he is paid for his compliance, that he thinks he shall 
contribute more to our satisfaction by professing to 
experience sensations of some kind, and we shall have 
definite causes to which to attribute these effects." 

There was presented at the same time a secret re- 
port by the same commission, dwelling upon the dangers 
to morality inherent in these practices. A commission 
appointed by the Royal Medical Society reported to 
the same effect. They found in all their experiments 
that an expectation of the result was necessary to its 
accomplishment, and they directed attention anew to 
the entire lack of proof of any of Mesmer's proposi- 
tions regarding the magnetic fluid. To this second 
report there was one dissenting voice, that of Jussieu, 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 187 

the botanist, who, while rejecting all belief in animal 
magnetism, yet curiously regarded heat, as developed 
by friction, as an essential factor of the phenomena. 
Furthermore, M. Thouret reported, by request of the 
same society, upon the literature and history of the 
doctrine, and traced the notions which Mesmer ad- 
vanced to older writers ; and showed the similarity of 
his practices to those of former astrologers and mystics. 
In opposition to these reports, of which more than 
twenty thousand copies were issued, Mesmer denounced 
the government, the scientific societies, the medical 
profession, and all who had opposed him. His attitude 
may be inferred from the closing words of a letter to 
Franklin. " I am like you. Sir, one of those whom one 
cannot oppress without danger, one of those men, who, 
because they have done great things, dispose of insult 
as other men dispose of authority. If any one like 
you. Sir, care to try it, I have the world as my judge, 
and if the world can forget the good I have done, and 
prevent the good I wish to do, I have posterity as my 
avenger." 

These adverse reports were most influential in ter- 
minating Mesmer' s career in Paris ; but in this they 
were assisted -by other events. Several deaths at the 
" baquet " alarmed his adherents, and were promptly 
turned to account by his opponents. The death of 
M. Court de Gebelin, an author and prominent man 
of the day, was the occasion of the characteristic 
comments of the period ; and especially so as he had 
recently and publicly announced his indebtedness for 
renewed health to Mesmer. One of the journals noted 
his death thus : " M. Court de Gebelin vient de mourir, 



188 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

gueri par le Magnetisme animale ; " anotlier suggested 
for his epitaph : — 

" Ci git ce pauvre Gobelin, 
Qui savait grec, h^breu, latin ; 
Admirez tous son hdroisme, 
II fut martyr de magnetisme." 

A comedy entitled " Docteurs Modernes " brought the 
" baquet " upon the stage, ridiculed Mesmer and his 
procedures, and hinted with no great delicacy at the 
abuses to which the popularity of his treatment might 
give rise. In England the system was thus satirized : 

THE WONDERFUL MAGNETIC AL ELIXIR 

Take of the chymical oil of Fear, Dread, 

and Terror, each 4 ounces ; 

of the rectified Spirits of Imagination 2 pounds ; 

Put all these ingredients into the bottle of fancy, digest 
for several days, and take forty drops at about nine in the 
morning, or a few minutes before you receive a portion of 
the Magnetic Effluvia. They wiU make the effluvia have a 
surprising effect, etc., etc. 

In 1785 there appeared a mock funeral oration upon 
Mesmer, travestying with endless extravagance his 
pretensions and methods. Caricature was a favorite 
mode of attack ; and the examples that have escaped 
destruction vividly preserve the spirit and the local 
color of the times. Yet both learned and unlearned 
opinion was divided, and the press was the medium of 
eulogy as well as of denunciation. Of still greater im- 
portance were the discoveries of the Marquis de Puy- 
segur, one of Mesmer's disciples, which diverted the 
interest in animal magnetism into a new channel ; and, 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 189 

finally, the turmoil of the French Revolution drove 
Mesmerism into obscurity, and Mesmer to a retreat 
in the town of Frauenfeld, near the lake of Constance. 
Our last picture of Mesmer shows him living in simple 
seclusion, complaining of the world's treatment of him, 
performing cures among those about him, and cherish- 
ing to the end his belief in animal magnetism. He 
died March 5, 1815, at Meersburg, where he lies buried. 

IV 

The system of animal magnetism Mesmer summed 
up in a series of twenty-seven propositions presented 
entirely without proof, asserting the existence of an 
" universally diffused subtle fluid, appearing in all por- 
tions of the celestial system, and affecting the animal 
economy by insinuating itself into the nerves ; it has 
properties analogous to that of the magnet, may be 
reflected like light, propagated like sound, and may 
be increased, opposed, accumulated, transmitted to 
another object, and transported ; furthermore this prin- 
ciple, which is, in a way, a sixth sense artificially ac- 
quired, will cure nervous disease directly, and others 
indirectly by provoking salutary crises, thus bringing 
the art of healing to perfection." Mesmer's methods 
varied at different stages of his career. The use of 
magnets as the main or exclusive factor in his cures, 
he seems to have abandoned before going to Paris ; at 
first he made the passes with his hands, or with an 
iron rod, directing his fingers toward his patient, and 
emphasizing these movements by strokings and rub- 
bings. The object of these manipulations was to con- 
centrate and send out the magnetism with which his 



190 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

body was saturated. This magnetism he could trans- 
fer to others or to inanimate objects. " I have mag- 
netized paper, bread, wool, silk, leather, stone, glass, 
water, different metals, wood, men, dogs, — in one 
word, all that I have touched, so that these substances 
produced the same effects on the patients as the mag- 
nets." When his increasing success no longer allowed 
him to attend personally to all his patients, he em- 
ployed a valet toucher, or imparted the curative pro- 
perties to water, to a tree, etc. At the height of his 
career he devised the " baquet," which he describes as 
a " small open vessel on a three-legged support, from 
which emerged some bent iron rods, the points of 
which could be easily applied to the outer parts of the 
body, such as the head, breast, stomach, etc." The 
baquet and other paraphernalia served to concentrate 
and impart the fluid that issued abundantly from Mes- 
mer s person. An eyewitness thus describes the re- 
sults of the treatment : " Some patients experienced 
pains and fever ; others fell into unusual and severe 
convulsions, frequently lasting for three hours ; others 
became faint and dazed, and but few remained unaf- 
fected. There were manifested the most violent invol- 
untary distortions of the limbs ; partial suffocation, 
heaving of the abdomen, wild glances, were observed ; 
one patient utters piercing cries, another has fits of 
laughter, while a third bursts into tears. Nothing can 
break this spell save the command of the magnetizer, 
and whether the patients be in the wildest frenzy or 
in the deepest stupor, a word, look, or nod of the mas- 
ter is sufficient to bring them to consciousness. This 
violent condition was technically termed a crisis, and 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 191 

deprived the patients of all consciousness so that none 
could at all remember what had been felt, heard, or 
done while in this condition; and yet they were so 
sensitive that one could not come in contact with them, 
not even touch the chair on which they sat, without 
causing fright and convulsions which only the master 
could pacify." As the cures progressed, the patients 
lost their sensitiveness to the magnetic fluid. The 
scenes about the baquet have come to be the most usual 
association with the name of Mesmer. The dimly lit 
room, the odor of incense, the mellow tones of the 
organ, the hushed silence and anxious expectancy ; 
the entrance of Mesmer, wand in hand, clad in strik- 
ing robes, to initiate the crises that then spread by the 
contagion of nervous disorder ; all these reflect the in- 
tellectual and social conditions of the time, and are most 
naturally interpreted as the adaptation of a shrewd 
adventurer to his environment. 

In the light of this account k becomes clear that 
while an altered condition of the nervous system and a 
state of increased suggestibility were constantly mani- 
fested in Mesmer's salle des crises^ yet Mesmer did 
not at all appreciate the nature of the process by which 
the effects were produced, nor the condition which 
he brought about in his patients. In brief. Mes- 
merism in the hands of Mesmer was clearly only an 
antecedent of hypnotism. Yet certain of the more 
detailed descriptions of the scenes about the baquet 
unmistakably indicate that some of Mesmer's subjects 
went into a true hypnotic condition ; that as many 
or more were the victims of more or less complex 
hysterical attacks is equally clear. But to this aspect 



192 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

of the phenomena, Mesmer was entirely inattentive. 
His attention was devoted to the elaboration of the 
physical agencies which in his view were the cause of 
the phenomena, and to the production of the rather 
violent symptoms of the crisis which he always regarded 
as an essential part of the curative procedure. He 
elaborated the baquet, filled it with bottles and glass 
and iron filings and water arranged in fanciful ways, 
and in some mystical sense suggestive of magnetic in- 
fluences. Mesmerism thus consisted of the induction 
of crises by animal magnetism, as concentrated in 
Mesmer's person and assisted by the baquet, by 
passes and physical manipulations. Farther than this 
Mesmer never went in his comprehension of the phe- 
nomena that we now know as hypnotism. Indeed, 
when he was confronted with Puysegur's subjects in 
the somnambulic state, he regarded the production 
of this true hypnotic condition as foolish, and consid- 
ered it to be only a subordinate phase of the mag- 
netic crisis. Towards the close of his life, and when 
the turmoil and the glory of his Parisian career were 
memories of the past, when he had had abundant 
opportunity for reflection and for the observation of 
the altered condition which the status of Mesmerism 
had assumed, Mesmer still maintained unaltered the 
dogmas of animal magnetism. 

In criticism of the attitude of the commission, it may 
certainly be held that they underestimated the signifi- 
cance of what they saw and used the term " imagina- 
tion " in a sense both vague and uncritical ; and yet 
the tenor of their conclusions was as wholesome as it 
was justifiable. They were primarily concerned with 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 193 

the correctness of the proposed explanation of the phe- 
nomena, and with the value of the curative procedures ; 
and on these points their verdict is logically reached 
and forcibly stated. The psychic element in the guid- 
ance of conduct as in the treatment of diseases they 
were prepared to acknowledge, but not as an indorse- 
ment of animal magnetism. " In searching for an 
imaginary cause for animal magnetism, the actual 
power which man exercises over his fellow-beings with- 
out the immediate and evident intervention of a physi- 
cal agent, is recognized." Their tests evidence their 
appreciation of the efficacy of suggestion, a power 
which they admit " can be elaborated to an art." 
While it may properly be urged that the report con- 
tributed to the postponement of the scientific study of 
this class of phenomena, its admirable logical qualities 
entitle its authors to the gratitude and honorable re- 
membrance of mankind. Indeed, in deference to the 
excited state of public opinion of the time, they sub- 
jected themselves and others to most painstaking tests, 
assuming the burden of disproof, and treating Mesmer's 
arbitrary attitude with more than scientific fairness. 
Their verdict not only destroyed Mesmer's pretensions, 
but held out a rational, though in our present lights an 
inadequate, interpretation of the phenomena, then so 
sensationally presented to an excited and distraction- 
loving public. 



Before the commissioners had completed their exam- 
ination, the aspect of animal magnetism was, in the 
hands of a French nobleman, undergoing an entire 



194 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

change. The Marquis A. M. J. Chastenet de Puyse- 
gur, born in 1752, came of a distinguished family, and 
himself took an important part in the Revolution ; 
his death was the result of a romantic but imprudent 
act of devotion to the royalist cause, on the occasion of 
the coronation of Charles X. in 1825. He was one 
of Mesmer's select pupils, and himself a good subject at 
the baquet ; and likewise remained a firm supporter of 
the doctrines of animal magnetism. He had constructed 
a baquet at his estate at Buzancy, and was applying the 
" Mesmeric" practices among his dependents. It hap- 
pened on the fourth of May, 1784, that he had magne- 
tized his subject, Victor, in the usual way, when (to 
continue with his own words) " what was my surprise 
to see at the end of a quarter of an hour this man 
sleeping peaceably in my arms without convulsion or 
pain. . . . He spoke and seemed occupied with his 
own thoughts. ... I perceived that these were affect- 
ing him unpleasantly, and I stopped them and sug- 
gested pleasanter ones, which indeed was not difficult. 
Soon I saw that he was happy, imagining that he had 
drawn a prize or was dancing at a fete, etc. ; these 
ideas I fostered, and thus forced him to move about on 
his chair as if dancing to a melody, which I made him 
repeat aloud, by humming it myself." Upon awaken- 
ing, Victor remembered nothing of what had happened. 
In this observation there are clearly recognizable an 
altered mental condition, a sleep-like unconscious state, 
loss of memory upon awakening, and suggestibility of 
sensations, ideas, and movements, — all important 
characteristics of a true hypnosis. Indeed, this may 
be considered as the first clearly recorded and uncom- 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 195 

plicated production of the condition which made possi- 
ble the study of hypnotism. 

The phenomena thus presented might readily have 
been the starting-point of a scientific investigation of 
this peculiar state, had not a subsequent observation 
unfortunately directed the experiments into a different 
channel. When Victor was again thrown into this 
"magnetic crisis" or sleep, — as Puysegur at first 
termed it, — he began to speak, describing his ailments, 
directing what should be done to effect his cure, and 
giving similar prescriptions, when questioned in regard 
to the treatment of others. This strange condition, 
which by its analogy to sleep-walking came to be termed 
" artificial somnambulism," was destined to mark a 
turning-point in the history of the topic. It was evi- 
dent, almost from the outset, that the baquet and 
the other paraphernalia, the crises, pain, and con- 
tortions were rendered quite unnecessary. The patients 
had become their own physicians, prescribing such sim- 
ple remedies as were familiar to them by use or hearsay, 
and predicting the time of appearance and the nature of 
tlie symptoms, such as they had witnessed about the 
baquet or in everyday life. Within two months of 
the first observation, 62 cures had been effected under 
Puysegur's direction, 300 patients were in attendance, 
and 10 somnambulists had been discovered ; before the 
close of the year (1784) Puysegur published a volume 
detailing his cures, his correspondence, and his theory 
of animal magnetism. 

From the point of view of modern hypnotism, Puyse- 
gur's position is a most important one, more important, 
indeed, than that of Mesmer. His literary productions 



196 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

and his personal activity in the formation of the 
Loges d' Harmon ie (organizations devoted to the 
study of animal magnetism) were the most influential 
factors in keeping alive the study of these phenomena 
after Mesmer's downfall, and in their revival after the 
long interruption of the Revolution. Puysegur's views 
were at first identical with those of Mesmer ; he be- 
lieved in the magnetic fluid and the baquet and the 
crises; but his practices gradually dispensed with all 
these manipulations and regarded the action of the will 
upon the somnambules as the essential and sufficient 
method of effecting a cure. His conceptions were ex- 
tremely fanciful, and the point of view of his later 
writings is considerably at variance with that of his 
earlier compositions. " Some day," he predicts, " after 
five or six thousand years of existence upon earth, 
mankind will admit that there is a fluid, or rather a 
conserving agent of their existence and their health, 
which they can utilize . . . and direct for the benefit 
of their fellow-men by the simple action of their wills." 
This universal magnetism is regarded as acting directly 
through the human will ; " croyez et veuillez " is his 
motto. The tree likewise acts upon the patients con- 
nected with it, through the magnetic action imparted 
to it by the will of the magnetizer. Puysegur regarded 
what he termed the instinctive electro-magnetism of 
man as analogous to the force by which the chick im- 
parts movement and life to the germ upon which she 
broods. It was, however, his practical influence, and 
not that of his decidedly fantastic views, which guided 
the progress of the antecedents of hypnotism. The 
contributions of his successors, as of his predecessors, 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 197 

cannot deprive liim of the credit of discovery of the 
hypnotic condition and of the first clear appreciation of 
its importance. But the progress which Puysegur's 
discovery had brought about was almost at once lost 
by the extravagant claims which were soon made for 
the somnambules in their prediction and direction of 
the course of disease. They came to be regarded as 
possessed of supernormal powers by which they could 
perceive the anatomical conditions of their patients ; 
they predicted the future, or rather they were impressed 
in advance with a sensation of what was to happen — 
'•'•presentiment " or " optique preliminaire " ; they 
traveled in spirit to distant times and places ; they 
were en rapport with the magnetizer, hearing and 
obeying him alone, and interpreting his unexpressed 
thoughts and wishes ; their remedies were declared 
infallible, and Puysegur himself, after thirty years of 
experience, records that he had met with no case of a 
wrong prediction. The valuable discovery of an artifi- 
cially induced condition, recognizable by definite physi- 
ological and psychological changes, was at once engulfed 
in a senseless search for the wonderful and the pursuit 
of fantastic theories. 

Next in importance to the discoveries of Puysegur 
were those of Dr. Petetin, of Lyons. His general posi- 
tion is much the same as that of Puysegur ; for " animal 
magnetism," he substituted an " animal electricity," 
(such was the title of his posthumous volume, 1808) ; 
and he claimed to have found that the intervention of 
poor electric conductors opposed the appearance of cer- 
tain of the phenomena of the somnambulic state. In a 
work published in 1787, he described a new condition 



1D8 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

characterized by a fixed rigidity of the limbs, to which 
he gave the name (still applied to it) of " catalepsy," 
and which continues to be one of the characteristic 
modifications artificially produced by hypnotization. 
Dr. P^tetin describes how his subject, when magnet- 
ized, became insensible to external stimuli, how her 
pulse slackened, her muscles became fixed, and how she 
would maintain any position in which she was placed 
with statue-like rigidity. Dr. Petetin was also the first 
to record the automatic repetition by the subject of the 
movements of the operator ; the recollection when re- 
magnetized of what had happened in a previous som- 
nambulic condition, but had been forgotten in the 
normal interval ; and he also recorded the production 
of what is now known as a negative hallucination. 
When he had suggested to his subject that whoever 
would touch a certain candlestick would disappear 
from her sight, the subject no longer saw the individual 
thus spirited away. But as in the case of Puysegur, 
so also in that of Petetin, he became known not for 
his most careful and significant observations, but for 
those which administered to the love of the marvelous, 
and which were in essence totally erroneous. Petetin's 
contribution to the aggregate of error in which this 
study was to be merged was the memorable " trans- 
position of the senses." The same subject who brought 
to his notice the cataleptic condition led him into this 
extravagance. This subject while magnetized began to 
sing vociferously ; while engaged in changing her posi- 
tion during her catalepsy, his chair slipped, and he fell 
toward her, exclaiming, " Oh, how unfortunate that I 
cannot stop this singing." " Oh, doctor," she replied, 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 199 

" do not worry, I won't sing any more ; " and she 
stopped at once. Presently the singing was resumed, 
and no words of the doctor could stop it, until he spoke to 
her in the attitude previously assumed by the accidental 
fall, with his head near her stomach. In this position 
she heard him and obeyed, but gave no heed to his 
commands when he shouted them into her ear. And 
thus was originated the transposition of the senses ; for 
Petetin at once concluded, in accordance with the 
remarkable sensibilities attributed to somnambules, 
that his subject heard through her stomach. By further 
experiments he became convinced that tastes and odors 
could be similarly perceived, and that his subject could 
read what was written on a card applied to her stomach. 
He also credited the various other exalted and marvel- 
ous mental faculties of his subjects, and added to the 
prevailing mystery and supernatural tendency of the 
period. His historical influence was but slight ; he 
was regarded as a mesmerist, and was chiefly remem- 
bered by his introduction of the transposition of the 
senses into the traditional system of artificial somnam- 
bulism. It is interesting to note that the detection of 
error in another's work does not protect against a simi- 
lar error in one's own ; Puysegur, while accepting with 
implicit faith the extravagances of his own subjects, 
was able to recognize that unconscious suggestion lay 
at the basis of Petetin's observations. If at first, he 
remarks, Petetin had happened to suppose that his cata- 
leptics could speak only during the wane of the moon 
in May, they would have been dumb for eleven and a 
half months. 



200 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

VI 

The early decades of the present century witnessed 
a revival of interest in animal magnetism. Those 
v^^hom the Revolution had turned away from their 
favorite studies returned to them ; new societies were 
organized ; journals in the interest of the science were 
founded; it was recognized by various governments 
and scientific associations ; the Berlin Academy in 1818 
offered a prize of 3000 marks for the best memoir on 
the subject ; Mesmer was brought forth from his ob- 
scurity, and many of the distinctive traits of his system 
were reintroduced and amplified. The movement was 
no longer confined to France, but spread all over 
Europe, and even reached America. Its most con- 
tinuous connection was, however, still with Paris, and 
mainly with the learned societies to whom Mesmer had 
appealed in vain. 

In contrast to the dominant belief in the miraculous 
endowment of " somnambulic " subjects, there were a 
few wbo presented the subjective nature of the pheno- 
mena. The career of Faria, a priest of Portuguese 
extraction, who resided long in India, is regarded by 
some as occupying an important place in the history 
of hypnotism. The Abbe Faria came to Paris in 1814 
and gave public exhibitions, in which he produced 
many of the typical hypnotic phenomena, and ex- 
plained them as dependent not at all on his own 
powers, but entirely upon the susceptibility and the 
faith of his subjects. He rejected alike any belief in 
a personal influence or in a magnetic or other fluid. 
He simply asked his subjects to think determinedly of 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 201 

sleep, or to look at tlie back of his hand ; and then in 
an authoritative voice he would call out " dormez^'* 
emphasizing the command by pressing his hand on the 
subject's forehead. By such simple means he put to 
sleep three or four of every five subjects, and that 
within a minute or two. He demonstrated the produc- 
tion of forced movements, the deprivation of control of 
simple movements, the false perceptions of sense, etc., 
all as products of suggestion, and indeed anticipated 
many of the typical phenomena of modern hypnotism. 
Faria's career was prematurely curtailed by an unfor- 
tunate incident ; an actor succeeded in feigning sleep in 
one of his performances, and forthwith branded him as 
an impostor. If we may credit certain accounts, his 
position practically anticipated that of Braid ; but, 
according to others, while impressed with the value of 
verbal suggestion, he was not free from the prevailing 
mysteries and dogmas of somnambulism. In 1819 
Bertrand delivered a course of public lectures on ani- 
mal magnetism, notable for their appreciation of the 
r61e of suggestion in their production. For example, 
he sent a magnetized letter to his patient which, when 
applied to the body, produced the desired symptoms ; 
but a second letter, not magnetized, but supposed to be 
so, and a third letter, written by a friend in imitation 
of Bertrand's handwriting, were equally efficacious. 
These are, however, some of the exceptional exponents 
of the doctrines, which in the main were concerned 
with the miraculous element of somnambulism intro- 
duced by Puysegur and his followers. 

It is to be noted that in the revival of hypnotism the 
scene of operation was transferred from the baquet 



202 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

and salle des crises to the hospital ; the subjects are 
no longer persons of fashion seeking release from ennui 
but patients of the poorer classes, suffering mainly from 
one or other of the protean forms of nervous derange- 
ment. Some very remarkable subjects were discovered 
at the Salpetriere by Georget and Rostan, and the 
former inserted a chapter on somnambulism in his 
textbook of physiology. In 1820 Husson authorized 
magnetism at the H5tel Dieu ; and within a brief time 
somnambules were to be found at almost all the hos- 
pitals of Paris. The phenomena presented were those 
introduced by Puysegur ; patients became somnambulic, 
prescribed for themselves and others, perceived by an 
internal sense the details of their own anatomy, fore- 
saw the future, and developed a variety of abnormal 
sensibilities. Baron Du Potet, who experimented ex- 
tensively at the H6tel Dieu, was convinced that his 
subjects could perceive his silent wish and obey his 
unexpressed command. In Germany appeared eccen- 
tric systems of " Tellurism " and " Siderism," and the 
occult was rampant. The mysterious and extreme 
phenomena were accentuated, and the value and genu- 
ineness of the entire somnambulic condition were made 
to rest upon the demonstrability of miracles. Here 
and there a few of the simpler phenomena, such as 
insensibility to pain, were produced, but in the main 
these were neglected. 

Of this type were the observations that, through the 
zeal of Dr. Foissac, the Academy of Medicine was called 
upon to consider in 1825. He offered to exhibit his 
subjects, claiming for them all the supernormal powers 
above indicated — that, indeed, " they were possessed of 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 203 

the genius that had inspired Hippocrates." The work 
of this commission was not free from dissensions ; and 
five years elapsed before they were able to submit a 
report. The report was extremely favorable to the 
magnetists, and urged that, while some of the effects 
produced were too trivial to serve as evidence of a new 
system, and while others could be explained as due to 
the action of the imagination, " some results depend 
solely upon magnetism and cannot be produced without 
it." The commission corroborated the physiological 
and other effects that had been already recorded, — 
such as quickening of respiration and circulation, the 
induction of tremors and convulsive movements, in- 
sensibility to pain and to ordinary stimuli, the rapport 
between subject and operator, the continuity of memory 
in successive magnetic states ; but the chief stress was 
laid upon the more wonderful operations. Of these 
they certified as genuine, reading with closed eyes, the 
prediction of the course of disease, clairvoyance, and 
general mental exaltation. They also testified to the 
value of the therapeutic effects, and conclude that the 
*' academy should recognize and encourage researches 
into magnetism as an interesting branch of psychology 
and natural history." The report was read, but met 
with such decided disapproval that it was withheld 
from the public. Its fundamental error was the sup- 
position that the demonstration of so unaccountable a 
phenomenon as reading without the use of the eyes 
was necessary to or could establish the existence of 
animal magnetism ; they also erred through ignorance 
of the extreme rigidity of conditions necessary to ex- 
clude the endless possibilities of deception, conscious 



204 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

and unconscious, and of the remarkable subtlety and 
hypersesthesia of hysterical and hypnotic subjects. 

The next scene upon the stage of the Academy of 
Medicine was enacted in 1837. At this time, the pain- 
less extraction of a tooth from a patient in a somnam- 
bulic condition aroused considerable attention, espe- 
cially as the operator, Dr. Oudet, was a member of the 
academy. Other painless surgical operations upon 
magnetized patients were reported. At about this time, 
Dr. Berna directed the attention of the academy to his 
subjects, for whom he claimed such powers as reading 
with closed eyes. To test these claims a commission 
of nine was appointed, and reported promptly, July 17, 
1837. This report was negative in the extreme. It 
raised the objection that everything was made to rest 
upon the testimony of these somnambulists ; it de- 
clared that even the proofs of insensibility were defec- 
tive, and flatly denied the existence of the condition 
of somnambulism. The alleged interpretation of the 
will of the operator was referred to unconscious sug- 
gestion ; the attempt at reading with the eyes closed 
and the recognition of objects applied to the occiput was 
either a total failure, or depended for its small measure 
of success upon the shrewd guesses of the subjects, 
whose honesty was regarded as not above suspicion. 
" We are at a loss what to think of a somnambulist 
who described the knave of clubs on a blank card, who 
transformed the ticket of an academician into a gold 
watch with a white dial plate inscribed with black 
figures, and who, if she had been pressed, would per- 
haps have gone on to tell us the hour marked by this 
watch." The commission of 1837, even more specific- 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 205 

ally than that of 1825, was called upon to consider 
alleged marvels ; and this circumstance should be taken 
into account in applying to them, as may properly be 
done, the same criticism as was directed against former 
commissions. They, too, have mistaken the real issue, 
and their justifiable skepticism regarding such facts as 
reading without the use of the eyes unduly biased 
their judgment in regard to the simpler and readily 
verifiable phenomena. 

The next step was certainly a practicable one ; Bur- 
din, a member of the academy, offered a prize of three 
thousand francs to any one who could read without the 
use of the eyes. The offer was open for two years, and 
subsequently the time was extended. Considering the 
large number who had claimed this power, few offered 
themselves for examination ; and these either clearly 
failed to meet the test (being detected in the manipula- 
tion of the bandage, and the like), or those who had 
the somnambulists in charge refused to conform to the 
conditions required by the examiners ; and so the prize 
was never awarded. The academy then voted, Octo- 
ber 1, 1840, to refuse from that time on to give any 
consideration to questions relating to animal mag- 
netism. 

VII 

Soon after the study of animal magnetism was thus 
denied academic recognition in France, it was in some 
measure divested of its mystifying and confusing accre- 
tions, by the independent observations of an English 
surgeon, James Braid. Braid's first experience with 
the phenomena of animal magnetism was at the seance 



206 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

given by Charles Lafontaine, a traveling mesmerist, 
at Manchester, on November 13, 1841. He came to 
this exhibition inclined to regard the phenomena as 
due to deception, trickery, and illusion, and saw no- 
thing to disturb his belief. At a second attendance, 
he was impressed with the fact that the " magnetized " 
subjects were unable to open their eyes ; this he attrib- 
uted to a paralysis of the nervous centres by a too 
prolonged or too intense sensory strain. Braid at once 
initiated experiments at his home. He began by ask- 
ing a friend to stare fixedly at the neck of a bottle, 
held close to and a little above his eyes ; in a few min- 
utes the subject's eyelids closed, his head dropped, and 
he went to sleep ; the same process was repeated upon 
Mrs. Braid, with an equally successful result. These 
experiments were soon extended, and Braid was suc- 
cessful in sending to sleep nearly all who presented 
themselves. The regularity and simplicity of the pro- 
cess, as well as the unmistakable evidences of an 
altered mental condition, left no doubt of the genuine- 
ness of the induced sleep. " I now stated that I con- 
sidered the experiments fully proved my theory, and 
expressed my entire conviction that the phenomena of 
mesmerism were to be accounted for on the principle 
of a derangement of the state of the cerebro-spinal 
centres, and of the circulatory, and respiratory, and 
muscular systems, induced, as I have explained, by a 
fixed stare, absolute repose of body, fixed attention, and 
suppressed respiration concomitant with that fixity of 
attention. That the whole depended upon the physi- 
cal and psychical condition of the patient, arising from 
the causes referred to, and not at all on the volition, or 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 207 

passes of the operator, throwing out a magnetic fluid, 
or exciting into activity some mystical universal fluid 
or medium. I further added that having thus pro- 
duced the primary phenomena, I had no doubt that the 
others would follow as a matter of course, time being 
allowed for their gradual and successive development." 
The practical importance of the change of view thus 
inaugurated was extreme ; it combated the prevalent 
notion that to prove the reality of the magnetized con- 
dition, it was necessary to perform miracles ; it recog- 
nized different degrees and stages of the induced con- 
dition ; it emphasized the dependence of the condition 
upon the state of the nervous system, and supplied the 
physiologist with a rational interest in the phenomena ; 
it discarded the vain hypothesis of an universal fluid ; 
it simplified the methods of producing the state, and 
showed its analogy to ordinary sleep ; it proved that 
the phenomena were independent of the will or any 
subtle power of the operator, but depended essentially 
upon the compliance and suggestibility of the subject. 
The importance of Braid's position in the history of 
hypnotism is not easily overrated ; it depends largely 
upon the fact that he was the first to recognize the 
physiological aspect of the phenomena and to abandon 
completely any relation with the fantastic theories and 
practices that grew up in the wake of animal magne- 
tism. It cannot be said that Braid's discoveries, how- 
ever original with him, had not been anticipated by 
others ; indeed, it is clear that the Abbe Faria's method 
of inducing the condition and the phenomena that he 
exhibited were essentially the same as those to which 
Braid directed attention ; while Bertrand, and even 



208 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

Puysegur and others, had recognized the role of sug- 
gestibility and imagination in producing many of the 
effects. But Braid, far more clearly than any one else, 
presented the phenomena from a legitimate scientific 
view, correlated the various phenomena with one an- 
other^ and laid the foundations of a true science of 
hypnotism. Without disparaging the labors of others 
in this field, and without forgetting the unfortunate 
circumstances in Braid's career which detracted from 
his influence, the title may be justly claimed for him, 
of the founder of modern hypnotism, as he was also 
the inventor of the term. 

It would take us too far into the details of hypnotic 
condition to describe Braid's practices and experi- 
ments ; attention will be directed only to those points 
which have a bearing upon the further history of the 
topic. At the outset. Braid recognized that he was 
dealing with an altered nervous condition, in which 
were present hypersesthesia, or exalted sensibility of 
several of the senses, together with a control over 
functions normally beyond the reach of the will ; that 
these powers could be used to neutralize pain, as well 
as for curative suggestions in the treatment of dis- 
ease ; and that the phenomena had a distinct relation 
to ordinary sleep ; this last relation led him at first to 
speak of the topic as " Neurypnology," — the title of 
his first book, published in 1843. It is quite intelli- 
gible that the confused and misleading form in which 
the phenomena were presented during Braid's time 
prevented him from grasping at once or completely 
the true subjective nature of the condition, in spite 
of the clearness with which he recognized the marks 



HYPNOTISM AND IJS ANTECEDENTS 209 

of its genuineness. Thus, he regarded that a physical 
influence had much to do with the result, and con- 
fessed that he was entirely at a loss to understand 
why a breath of air upon the skin, as by blowing upon 
it, should terminate the hypnotic condition ; or make 
a rigid limb flexible, or restore the sight of one eye, 
and leave the other insensible ; or change the condi- 
tion from that of general inactivity to one of extreme 
mobility and excitability. Later, however, he recog- 
nized in all this, the action of suggestion combined with 
the imaginative ingenuity of the subject. But his most 
serious handicap was his connection with the doctrines 
of phrenology, then occupying a very conspicuous posi- 
tion in the public eye. It was brought into connection 
with mesmerism or hypnotism by the performances of 
professional exhibitors, who claimed that pressure upon 
different parts of the head of the magnetized sub- 
ject induced the display of the corresponding " facul- 
ties." It seems quite clear that Braid was entirely 
misled by these curious experiments ; and in spite of 
the fact that he later abandoned all belief in their real- 
ity, and explained them as due to suggestion and asso- 
ciation ; and further that he presented some grounds 
for believing that his former experiments were intended 
to disprove phrenology, — yet it is perfectly clear 
w^hy the medical profession and the intelligent public 
should have discredited Braid's labors by reason of his 
notorious connection with the doctrines of phrenology. 
Surely a work which recorded such experiments as the 
following naturally excited a feeling of distrust. (Pa- 
tients, on being " pressed over the phrenologist's organ 
of time, always expressed a desire ' to write ' — a letter 



210 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

— to lier mother or brother ; over their organ of tune, 
' to sing ' ; between this and wit, ' to be judicious ' ; 
the boundary between wit and causality, ' to be clever ' ; 
causality, ' to have knowledge ' ; in the centre of the 
forehead, to have ' a certain perception of learning ' ; 
and so on." And again : " I placed a cork endways 
over the organ of veneration and bound it in that posi- 
tion by a bandage passing under the chin. I now 
hypnotized the patient, and . . . after a minute and a 
half an altered expression of countenance took place, 
and a movement of the arms and hands, which latter 
became clasped as in adoration, and the patient now 
arose from the seat and knelt down as if engaged in 
prayer. On moving the cork forward, active bene- 
volence was manifested, and, on being pushed back, 
veneration again manifested itself." We are then 
assured that the subjects knew nothing of phrenology, 
were perfectly honest, and that no indications were 
given of the expected results. Braid frankly records 
his belief in the possibility of calling out phrenological 
activities by pressure on definite points of the cranium ; 
and the only loophole of explanation which he left 
open was the one to which he later resorted, claiming 
that the manifestations may be due to " a system of 
training during the sleep, so that they may come out 
subsequently as acts of memory, when corresponding 
points are touched, with which particular ideas have 
been associated through audible suggestion." In brief, 
in this explanation, given in 1854, Braid demonstrated 
the admitted possibility of arousing emotions in hyp- 
notic subjects by inducing the expressions with which 
those emotions were associated. But in 1843 he wrote, 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 211 

"(If I am to believe the evidence of my senses, there- 
fore, in anything, I cannot see how I can doubt the re- 
lation which consists between certain points of the 
cranium and the mental manifestations which are ex- 
cited by acting on them during hypnotism. I believe 
there are few physiological phenomena which can be 
more clearly demonstrated, especially at such an early 
stage of their investigation." 

Braid's later works did not attract the attention 
which they deserved, and perhaps it is proper to base 
an estimate of his insight into the phenomena of hyp- 
notism upon his more mature but less influential writ- 
ings. In these, Braid recognized the subjective nature 
of the phenomena as fully as they are recognized by 
the extreme representatives of the " suggestionist " 
school of to-day. Indeed, he spoke of the state as 
" Monoideism," to emphasize the fact that, while in 
this condition, the subject's mind was totally absorbed 
in one idea; and that this narrow concentration of 
consciousness, this influence of the dominant idea, 
completely controlled mental and physical action, and 
rendered the subject insensible to all other stimuli. 
Braid acquired a profound knowledge of the effects of 
suggestion, both directly, as verbal suggestion, and the 
indirect suggestion of manner and expectation. He 
tells of a physician in London who used " mesmerism " 
with his patients, and who produced catalepsy of the 
hands and arms and other wonderful effects by the 
application of magnets. Braid recognized that the sub- 
ject, though asleep, was in a condition in which she 
could hear what was going on. He assured the physi- 
cian (in the subject's hearing) that he had a little 



212 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

instrument in his pocket, which though not a magnet, 
would produce equally marked effects. Braid gave the 
patient the little instrument, with the remark to the 
physician that it would produce catalepsy in both 
hands and arms; and such was the result. Next, 
Braid declared that now she would be unable to hold 
it, which also was the case, the little instrument 
dropping out of her hands whenever it was given to 
her. When the patient was aroused, Braid next told 
the physician that when the little instrument was sus- 
pended on the third finger of the right hand of the 
patient, it would send her to sleep ; to which the physi- 
cian responded, " It never will." But Braid insisted 
that it would ; and the event proved that he was cor- 
rect. The little instrument, so variously potent in 
combination with a proper suggestion, was nothing 
more than his portmanteau key and ring. It illustrates 
the reverse of Voltaire's saying, that incantations, to- 
gether with a sufficient amount of arsenic, will kill your 
neighbor's sheep. In the same way Braid proved that 
the experiments which seemed to show that certain 
persons were sensitive to metals were in reality due to 
unconscious suggestion, and that when, unknown to the 
subjects, wood was substituted for metals, the expected 
results ensued. The peculiar effects described by 
Reichenbach's sensitives he naturally referred to the 
same cause; as also the doctrine, then brought for- 
ward, that susceptible individuals could perceive the 
effects of drugs enclosed in sealed vials. All these 
alleged phenomena were correctly referred to uncon- 
scious suggestion and to hyperaesthesia. Homoeopathic 
remedies, he argued, owed their efficiency to the same 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 213 

action of the expectant imagination; for the effect 
conld hardly be ascribed to a quantity so minute that 
a patient would have to take a dose every second of the 
day and night for 30,000 years to get a single grain 
of the substance. He analyzed the possibilities of 
error in the interpretation of clairvoyance ; and showed 
that perfectly natural and well-understood processes 
were sufficient to furnish an intelligible mode of ac- 
counting for so much of the success as could be veri- 
fied. He recognized the dangers of hypnotism in 
inexperienced hands ; although he believed that the 
moral sensibility of the subject was sufficiently retained 
in the hypnotic condition to prevent the abuse of the 
state for criminal purposes. He appreciated its field 
of applicability in the cure of disease, though he by no 
means regarded it as a panacea, and also its special use 
in surgical operations. In fine, Braid, in spite of cer- 
tain shortcomings, which are characteristic only of his 
earlier writings, stands out preeminently as the first to 
appreciate at their true value the entire range of tho 
complex factors of the hypnotic condition ; to distin- 
guish the genuine phenomena from those which owed 
their marvelous aspect to unconscious suggestion; and 
to show the relation of the whole topic to the recog- 
nized body of scientific knowledge. 

VIII 

In spite of these very great merits, Braid's influence 
was for a considerable time a slight and uncertain one ; 
this was probably due not alone to the opposition which 
his methods and teachings aroused in the medical pro- 
fession, but far more to the natural distrust of a topic 



214 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

which was exploited in the form of popular and vulgar 
exhibitions. The main association of hypnotism was 
still with the absurd notions of animal magnetism, and 
with attempts to demonstrate marvels, such as clair- 
voyance and the sensitiveness to magnets. It thus 
came about that, during the period subsequent to 
Braid's discoveries, hypnotism presented a varied as- 
pect. On the one hand, unlimited skepticism and a 
determined repudiation of readily verifiable observa- 
tions ; on the other, uncritical enthusiasm without 
appreciation of science and its methods. But in addi- 
tion to the conservatism of the man of science, and the 
groundless pretensions of the mesmerist, are found 
the contributions of a few discerning students aiding, 
though in a sporadic and uncertain way, the progress 
of the science. What had been repeatedly established 
was forgotten and had to be reestablished ; observations 
made by those who in some one direction had fallen 
into error were discredited, and had to be verified 
anew. The progress was thus tortuous and ill-defined, 
but none the less the essential and important phe- 
nomena were gaining wider and more authoritative 
recognition. The use of hypnotism as an anaesthetic 
was most influential in compelling the attention of the 
medical profession ; for the frequent reports of surgical 
operations upon hypnotized patients by men of reputa- 
tion could hardly be dismissed as illusory. As early 
as 1821 Recamier had utilized the magnetic insensi- 
bility for surgical purposes ; in 1829 Clocquet per- 
formed a severe operation upon a magnetized woman ; 
in 1837 Oudet extracted a tooth from a patient in this 
condition ; from 1842 on a number of English surgeons 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 215 

— Tupham, Ward, EUiotson, Purland — used hypno- 
tism for various surgical operations, and a Mesmeric 
Infirmary for this purpose was successfully main- 
tained. Many of the reports of such operations were 
received with extreme skepticism. The celebrated sur- 
geon, Lisfranc, regarded Clocquet as a dupe; and 
Oudet met with a similar reception. Most extensive 
and remarkable were the series of operations performed 
by Dr. Esdaile in India, upon natives, and reported in 
1846. The most shocking and dangerous pathological 
growths were removed without pain and with the mini- 
mum of discomfort. Dr. Esdaile is entitled to high 
rank in the account of this period, because his work 
was done so largely in independence of others ; more- 
over, he developed a theory of the phenomena quite 
analogous to that of Braid ; and in days when anaes- 
thetics were but little known naturally grew enthusi- 
astic over the value of the practices which he had so 
successfully demonstrated. 

A more detailed account of this period than is here 
possible would consider the physiological contributions 
of such as Carpenter and Bennett and Mayo, whose 
criticisms and explanations of the alleged marvels and 
false theories of mesmerism stemmed but could not 
stay the flow of extravagant practices and beliefs with 
which England was then deluged ; with the carefully 
detailed conclusions and experiments of Azam, of De- 
marquay, and Girard-Teulon, of Durand de Gros (who 
later assumed the name of Phillips, and through whom 
Braid's work was introduced into France) ; and of 
several other and often independent workers. There 
is one, however, whose position is worthy of separate 



216 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

notice, and who in a peculiar way forms the transition 
between the present status of hypnotism and that 
which prevailed a half century ago. I refer to Dr. 
A. A. Liebault, who, until within recent years, main- 
tained at Nancy the hypnotic clinic founded by him 
forty years ago. In 1866, he published a valuable 
and original work describing his methods and practice. 
He put his subjects to sleep by verbal command, and 
suggested to them the relief of their pains and ail- 
ments, enforcing the suggestions with such prescriptions 
as were likely to be effective. He thus adopted 
the method of " suggestion " as the central point of 
the system, and may be regarded as the founder of the 
" suggestionist " school, also known, though not in the 
main by reason of his labors, as the school of Nancy. 
Living in retirement, out of touch with the medical 
profession, presenting his results in a form unattractive 
to the scientific mind, and encumbered by peculiar per- 
sonal views, his work attracted no attention; and it 
remained for more influential investigators, particularly 
Charcot at Paris and Bernheim at Nancy, to establish 
the recognized doctrines of modern hypnotism. 

IX 

It will be instructive at this point to retrace our 
steps and complete the survey of the antecedents of 
hypnotism by some account of a series of contributions, 
which, while they may represent the backward steps in 
the zigzag line of progress from obscure speculations 
to science, are nevertheless important historical factors 
in the continuity of the movement, and in the mainte- 
nance of the interest in this branch of psychological 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 217 

study. The fanciful doctrines, which Mesraer revived, 
originated in mediaeval mysticism and superstition ; 
and at no time, from then till now, have such extrava- 
gant systems and notions failed to attract an all too 
extensive class of intellectual malcontents, to whom the 
progress of knowledge seems absurdly slow and labori- 
ous. Before the establishment of the scientific theory 
of the relation of body and mind, the opportunity in 
this field for such speculations was endless, and it is to 
the vast history of pseudo-science that an account of 
these properly belongs. It is for the purpose of gain- 
ing a proper understanding of the various conceptions 
which were and are associated with hypnotism that an 
excursion into this barren area is here made. The 
fantastic schemes of Mesmer, Puys^gur, and Petetin, 
and even of Braid, have already been noticed, and the 
seed sown by them still bears undesirable fruit. To 
J. P. F. Deleuze (1785-1835), author of influential 
works on mesmerism, may be accorded the doubtful 
honor of ranking as leader in the movement which 
continued the mystic and eccentric elements of animal 
magnetism. He accepted the combined marvels of mes- 
merism and somnambulism. He directed his efforts 
towards the elaboration of the paraphernalia of the 
baquet, the wand and passes, and the inculcation of 
most detailed cautions and regulations for the gui- 
dance of the operator. Every movement of the hand, 
and eyes, and head assumed special significance. The 
poles of the human frame must be considered, and 
no departure made from the prescribed manipulation. 
The process of demagnetizing is thus described : — 
" When you wish to put an end to the sitting, take 



218 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

care to draw toward the extremity of the hands and 
toward the extremity of the feet, prolonging your 
passes beyond these extremities and shaking your 
finger each time. Finally, make several passes trans- 
versely before the face, and also before the breast, at 
the distance of three or four inches ; these passes are 
made by presenting the two hands together, and briskly 
drawing them from each other, as if to carry off the 
superabundance of fluid with which the patient may be 
charged. You see that it is essential to magnetize, 
always descending from the head to the extremities, 
and never mounting from the extremities to the head." 
The magnetism is imparted to inanimate objects, and 
" one may magnetize a pitcher of water in two or three 
minutes, a glass of water in one minute. It is un- 
necessary to repeat here that processes pointed out for 
magnetizing water, like everything else, would be abso- 
lutely useless, if they were not employed with attention 
and with a determinate will." " The magnetizer who 
uses a wand ought to have one of his own, and not lend 
it to any person, lest it should be charged with differ- 
ent fluids — a precaution more important than it is 
commonly thought to be." It is this phase of the sub- 
ject that found its way into Germany, and was most 
typically embodied in the writings of Wolfart, Kieser, 
and Ennemoser. For such mystics nothing seemed too 
absurd to find credence, nor too profound to find an 
explanation in animal magnetism. 

It was through Deleuze's influence, also, that mes- 
merism was transplanted to America. As early as 
1837, Charles Poyen lectured and wrote on animal 
magnetism in New England ; he exhibited the usual 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 219 

phenomena, made the usual claims for supernatural 
faculties, and gave the usual fanciful expositions. It 
was, however, through Dods and Grimes, in 1850, that 
mesmerism became prominent in America, under the 
absurd name of " electro-biology." The popular inter- 
est which they aroused may be inferred from the fact 
that they were invited to exhibit before Congress, the 
signatures of Clay and Webster appearing in the letter 
of invitation. The absurdity of their writings is suffi- 
ciently evident in the following extracts : " Let two 
persons of equal brain, both in size and fluid, sit down. 
Let one of these individuals remain perfectly passive, 
and let the other exercise his mental and physical 
energies according to the true principles of mesmeriz- 
ing, and he will displace some of the nervo-vital fluid 
from the passive brain and deposit it in his own 
instead. The next day let them sit another hour, and 
so on day after day, until the acting brain shall have 
displaced the major part of the nervo-vital fluid from 
the passive brain and filled up that space with its own 
nervous force, and the person will yield to the mag- 
netic power and serenely slumber in its inexpressible 
quietude." " Your brain being magnetically subdued 
is worth hundreds of dollars to you. You are then 
ready for the day of distress." An ignorant young 
man is magnetized and forthwith converses with a 
" mental activity which put to blush men of superior 
education and intellectual endowments." An eminent 
lawyer is astonished at his learning and his quotations 
from legal authorities. He speaks Greek, Latin, 
French, Polish, all perfectly, and without accent ; 
though when awake he knows no language but Eng- 



220 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

lish. Grimes determined the function of parts of the 
brain from the answers of his somnambulist, and thus 
discovered that the corpus callosum is designed to 
equalize the flow of the nervous fluid. From the same 
source he received the assurance of the correctness of 
his phrenological views. " I then asked her concern- 
ing the location and uses of several new phreno-organs, 
which I supposed that I had discovered, and to my 
surprise she answered me without the least hesitation, 
and confirmed all my previous opinions, not even ex- 
cepting those opinions which I had never mentioned to 
any one, and which she could only have known by 
clairvoyance." 

" Electro-biology " made its way into England, and 
there found a place among the endless forms of absurd- 
ity and pseudo-science then prevalent. A few illustra- 
tions are powerless to give any adequate notion of the 
extent and variety of the extravagant pretensions with 
which animal magnetism was saturated in the years 
following Braid's observations. The diabolic origin 
of mesmerism was discussed by pulpit and press ; a 
pamphlet, entitled " Dialogue between a Mesmerist and 
a Christian," maintained that the two faiths were in- 
compatible. It was generally urged that mesmerism 
favored materialism, and in 1856 the Catholic Church 
issued an edict against the practice. The skepticism 
of the medical profession found expression in extreme 
and certainly unscientific statements. Dr. Buchanan 
(1851) of Glasgow, holding that the alleged condition 
was the result of acting and trickery, proposed the 
experiment of telling a hypnotized boy that he could 
not move, and then applying the birch ; this, he felt 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 221 

confident, would satisfactorily refute the whole doctrine, 
and if, in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, the 
boy did not scamper off, though his feet were mes- 
merized, he promised to recant " and to believe in 
mesmerism ever after." There is unfortunately no 
record of the acceptance of this test, which, in com- 
parison with the hypnotic anaesthesia of surgical 
operations then performed, would have been easily 
met. From the following comment of a medical jour- 
nal, in 1843, one may infer that the controversy did 
not always recognize the poliiesses of discussion. 
" The mesmero-mania has nearly dwindled in the 
metropolis into servile fatuity, but lingers in some of 
the provinces with the gohe-mouches and chaw-bacons, 
who, after gulping down a pound of fat pork, would, 
with well-greased gullets, swallow such a lot of mes- 
meric mummery as would choke an alligator or boa- 
constrictor." 

The two writers to be presently cited are selected as 
illustrations of the truth that the possession of intel- 
lectual attainments in other directions does not insure 
against such gross errors as are about to be noticed, 
and the second, moreover, serves as a type of the com- 
pilations of the period, to which the reader may be 
referred for further instances. The reputation of Miss 
Harriet Martineau insured general attention to her 
" Letters on Mesmerism " (1845). Miss Martineau 
was cured of a long-standing illness by magnetic treat- 
ment, the operator being a noted mesmerist, Spencer 
T. Hall. The magnetizing^process gave rise to pecul- 
iar sensations which were attributed to the action of 
the magnetic fluid. " My head has often appeared to 



222 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

be drawn out, to change its form according to the trac- 
tion of my mesmerist, and an indescribable but ex- 
ceedingly agreeable sensation of transparency and 
lightness through a part or whole of the frame has 
followed." Miss Martineau was thus made a convert 
to mesmerism, and initiated experiments of her own, 
finding in her maid, J., a somnambule of unusual 
powers. She maintained her health by following the 
prescriptions given by the somnambule, and the latter 
exhibited the many varieties of marvels with which we 
have become familiar. The spontaneous or suggested 
utterances of the somnambule upon matters relating to 
her exalted condition were unquestioningly accepted. 
'' Do the minds of the mesmerist and the patient 
become one ? " " Sometimes, but not often." — " Is it, 
then, that they taste, feel, etc., the same things, at the 
same moment ? " " Yes." — " Will our minds become 
one ? " "I think not." — " What are your chief 
powers ? " "I like to look up and see spiritual things ; 
I can see diseases, and I like to see visions." — " Can 
the mind hear otherwise than by the ear ? " " Not 
naturally ; but a deaf person can hear the mesmerist 
when in the sleep ; not anybody else, however." — " How 
is it that you can see without your eyes I " " Ah ! 
that is a curious thing. I have not found it out yet." 
From the " Letters to a Candid Inquirer on Animal 
Magnetism," by William Gregory, M. D., F. R. S. E., 
professor of chemistry in the University of Edinburgh, 
selections appropriate to our present purpose may be 
made almost at random. Some writing is placed in 
the hands of the somnambule, and from this she pic- 
tures the writer, tells of the lady's recent ailments, her 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 223 

surroundings, her travels, and her condition ; and when 
the lady herself is presented she immediately recognizes 
her as the subject of her vision. A lost watch is re- 
covered and the thief detected by the same means ; the 
whereabouts of absent friends traveling in distant lands 
is determined by placing a sample of their handwriting 
or a lock of their hair in the somnambule's hands. 
The somnambule transports herself to past times, and 
details the events of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, 
as she witnesses them. In her magnetic vision she fol- 
lows, day by day, the adventures of Sir John Franklin, 
who was then in the Arctic regions. She frequently 
spoke of his occupations, and, when asked the time of 
day, found it either by looking at a timepiece in the 
cabin or by consulting Sir John's watch ; and from 
the difference in time indicated by the somnambule 
tlie longitude of Sir John Franklin's location and the 
directions of his movements were calculated. " On a 
Sunday afternoon in February, 1850, she said it was 
about 10 A. M. there, and described the captain, Sir 
John, as reading prayers to the crew, who knelt in a 
circle with their faces upward, looking at him and 
appearing very sorrowful. She even named the chapter 
of St. Mark's gospel which he read on that occasion." 
Although we are naively told that, " as a general rule, 
we ought to verify the vision before admitting it as an 
instance of genuine clairvoyance," yet in this case the 
somnambule's assertions had been so uniformly verified 
that it seemed unnecessary to question the correctness 
of her mental Arctic explorations. 

All the varieties of supernatural conditions — con- 
scious lucidity, conscious clairvoyance, sympathetic clair- 



224 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

voyance, sympathetic retrovision, direct clairvoyance, 
mental traveling, introvision and prevision, spontaneous 
retrovision — were formulated and added their quota 
to the general mystery. The doctrine of cross-magnet- 
ism, or the disturbing influence of different magnetizers, 
was developed, and became a favorite mode of accounting 
for failures of all kinds. Extravagant doctrines origi- 
nating in other fields of pseudo-science were incorpo- 
rated into magnetism ; the magic mirror or crystal was 
one of these. The notion is doubtless very ancient, — 
compare the shew-stone of Dr. Dee (1527-1608), — 
and was revived by Baron Du Potet, who drew a black 
magic circle on the floor with a piece of charcoal ; this 
the subject approached, stared at it fixedly, and seemed 
fascinated by it ; grew excited, breathed hard, moved 
to and fro, and then saw visions in the magic mirror. 
" It was no dream nor nightmare ; the apparitions were 
actually present. A series of events were unrolled 
before him, represented by signs and figures which he 
could understand and gloat over, sometimes joyful, 
sometimes gloomy, just as these representations of the 
future passed before his eyes ! Yery soon he was over- 
come by delirium, he wished to seize the image, and 
darted a ferocious glance towards it ; he finally started 
forward to trample on the charcoal circle, the dust 
from it arose, and the operator approached to put an 
end to a drama so full of emotion and terror." 

" Darlingism " was a term brought forward by one 
Darling, who used a disc, said to be made of zinc and 
copper, to put his subjects to sleep. Like electro- 
biology, it was merely a new name for the same 
phenomena exhibited in connection with absurd theo- 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 225 

retical notions. The phrenological manifestations, so 
unfortunately countenanced by Braid, continued to be 
exhibited by others in connection with the hypnotic 
state. Clairvoyance continued to be regarded as one 
of the most essential tests of the mesmeric condition, 
and took a prominent part in public exhibitions. 
Somewhat later it was incorporated into the equipment 
of spiritualism, and this movement probably exerted a 
mystic influence upon mesmerism. 

The investigations of Baron Reichenbach added a 
new class of sensitives. Reichenbach announced the 
doctrine of an " odic " force or " odyle," streaming forth 
from magnets and from the human frame, and affect- 
ing the human system ; certain sensitives could see 
these emanations, and magnetized subjects at once be- 
come " odic " sensitives. The doctrine that certain 
persons are sensitive to metals was an ancient one. It 
reappeared in the myths that were woven about Casper 
Hauser, the wild boy of Nuremberg (1828), who gave 
evidence of his unusual origin by shuddering in the 
presence of a needle, and evidencing intense agony in 
passing a hardware shop. Miss Martineau's J. holds 
a piece of steel so tightly that no one can wrench it 
from her, but touch the steel with gold and it falls 
from her hands at once. The following citation will 
show how this movement was utilized in mesmeric 
practices : " But to ascertain whether he (a Major 
Buckley, a mesmerist) can obtain conscious clairvoy- 
ance, he makes slow passes from his own forehead to his 
own chest. If this produces a blue light in his face, 
strongly visible, the subject will probably acquire con- 
scious clairvoyance. If not, if the light be pale, the 



226 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

subject must first be rendered clairvoyant in the sleep. 
Taking those subjects who see a very deep blue light, 
he continues to make passes over his own face, and 
also over the object, a box or a nut, for example, in 
which written or printed words are inclosed, which the 
clairvoyant is to read. Some subjects require only a 
pass or two to be made clairvoyant, others require 
many. They describe the blue light as rendering the 
box or nut transparent, so that they can read what is 
inside. If too many passes be made by Major B., the 
blue light becomes so deep that they cannot read, and. 
some reverse passes must be made to render the light 
less deep. Major Buckley has thus produced, conscious 
clairvoyance in eighty -nine persons, of whom forty-four 
have been able to read mottoes contained in nut-shells, 
purchased by other parties for the experiment." 

It must not be supposed that these practices have, 
entirely disappeared. In a work published as late as 
1869 we may read such sentences as, "the clairvoy- 
ance of an idiot in a state of somnambulism would in- 
spire me with more confidence if I were sick than the 
greatest geniuses which grace modern medicine ; " and 
again, "it never could be imagined with what tact, 
accuracy, and precision, somnambulists account for 
anything that takes place in them. They are literally 
present at the performance of all their organic func- 
tions ; they detect in them the slightest disorder, the 
minutest change. Then of all this he forms a clear, 
exact, and mathematical idea. He could tell, for in- 
stance, how many drops of blood there are in his 
heart ; he knows, almost to a gramme, how much it 
would require to satisfy his appetite at the moment ; 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 227 

how many drops of water would be necessary to satisfy 
his thirst, and his valuations are inconceivably exact. 
Time, space, forces of all kinds, the resistance and 
weight of objects, his thoughts, or rather his instinct 
measures, he calculates, appreciates all these matters by 
a single glance of the eye." In the lectures and cheap 
compendiums telling " How to Mesmerize," and giving 
" The Whole Art of Mesmerism," by which the travel- 
ing mesmerists of yesterday, if not of to-day, extend 
their fame, one may find these very same doctrines 
side by side with garbled accounts of recent discover- 
ies in hypnotism. But we have already dwelt too long 
upon the aberrations of the human intellect, in which 
the ludicrous and the solemn are so curiously combined. 

X 

The transition from the antecedent to the present 
status of hypnotism was accomplished in the main by 
two factors ; by the precise determination, according 
to rigidly scientific methods, of the physiological and 
psychological characteristics of the hypnotic state, 
and by the advocacy of its claims and the further devel- 
opment of its sphere of influence, on the part of pro- 
fessional men of ability and acknowledged standing. 
The mischievous and erratic associations of mesmer- 
ism, as also of hypnotism, were difficult to outgrow. 
Unjustifiable skepticism and neglect were the natural 
consequences of extravagance, perversion, and charla- 
tanism. Even the repeated and verifiable production 
by hypnotic means of ansesthesia sufficient for seri- 
ous surgical operations, was ignored ; partly, perhaps, 
because of the discovery of ether, which turned the 



228 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

interest in anaesthetics into new channels. The legiti- 
mate and progressive investigations of such as Braid, 
Liebault, Azam, Durand de Gros, and others, were only 
fitfully and sparsely recognized. As late as 1874 De- 
chambre, in his Medical Encyclopedia, declares that 
all the phenomena rest upon self-deception and delusion, 
and that the condition does not exist. But beginning 
with the third quarter of the century the attitude rap- 
idly changed. Richet (1875) published an important 
paper in an authoritative physiological journal, in 
which he again established by scientific methods the 
reality of the hypnotic condition. In this he wrote, 
" It requires considerable courage to speak aloud the 
word somnambulism. The stupid credulity of the 
masses and the pretensions of certain charlatans have 
brought the thing itself as well as the name into such 
disfavor that there are but few men of science who do 
not look disparagingly upon any communication on the 
subject." The advocacy of Charcot (1878) and his 
demonstrations at the Salpetriere finally succeeded in 
gaining the day ; and in 1882 the ban placed upon 
academic discussions of this subject was lifted by the 
reception on the part of the Academy of Science of 
a memoir by Charcot on hypnotism. The extensive 
series of studies instigated by him at the Salpetriere, 
and carried on with marked ability and success by 
those who in some measure drew their inspiration from 
the field of inquiry which he inaugurated ; the recog- 
nition which he secured for the presentation of studies 
upon hjqDnotism before learned societies ; the far- 
reaching influence of his authority, — all contributed 
to the acceptance of hypnotism as a scientific fact, and 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 229 

the inclusion of its study within the circle of the sci- 
ences. It should be carefully noted, however, that the 
period (which, to connect it with the name of but one 
of its representatives, may be called the period of 
Charcot), though marked by important extensions of 
our knowledge of hypnotic phenomena, was in essence 
a period of reinstatement. All the essential and fun- 
damental discoveries had been made and forgotten, 
and even had been rediscovered decades before ; but 
not until this period were they extensively and authori- 
tatively acknowledged. This reinstatement was natu- 
rally the result of cooperation of many workers ; while 
hypnotism still remained a favorite study of French 
neurologists, other countries contributed extensively to 
its advance. In Germany the main impetus to its 
study seems to have been given by the striking demon- 
strations of hypnotic phenomena by a Danish hypno- 
tist, Hansen (1879 and 1880), which led to their study 
by various physiologists. The earliest American con- 
tribution of this period (and which was somewhat 
independent in origin) was a study of trance-states by 
Dr. G. M. Beard, of New York, in 1881. But ac- 
counts of contributors and contributions belong no 
longer to the historical aspect which we are consider- 
ing, but to modern hypnotism. Suffice it to say that 
the literature of the subject of the past two decades is 
almost alarmingly voluminous in its extent, and most 
cosmopolitan in its composition ; that cognate depart- 
ments of science — physiology, psychology, medicine 
— consider its bearings upon their special problems ; 
that its therapeutic application to the cure of disease 
by the efficacy of the power of suggestion is recognized 



230 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

extensively by general practitioners, by neurologists, 
as well as in specific hypnotic clinics ; tbat its utiliza- 
tion as a special method of psychology has been pro- 
ductive of interesting and valuable contributions ; and 
that it illuminates many a dark recess in the story of 
the historical and sociological development of humanity. 
One phase of the matter, alone, seems destined to 
serve as an historical turning-point ; the year of the 
new epoch is best marked by the appearance in 1886 
of Dr. Bernheim's classic volume on " Suggestion and 
its Therapeutical Applications " ; and the key-note 
of the newer doctrine lies in the term " suggestion." 
Charcot and his followers had, in different degrees and 
ways, emphasized the physical characteristics of the 
hypnosis ; they held that in typical subjects there were 
objectively distinct hypnotic states, characterized and 
induced by physical manifestations. They recognized 
the importance of suggestion, but in addition to it also 
recognized the existence of objectively differentiated 
hypnotic phenomena. These and related doctrines 
are commonly referred to as those of the " school of 
Paris." In contrast with this is the " school of Nancy," 
of which Dr. Bernheim is the acknowledged leader, 
and which may be characterized as the " suggestionist " 
school. This school recognizes different degrees of 
suggestibility, and an endless variety of resulting phe- 
nomena, but regards suggestion, in its various forms, 
as furnishing a sufficient and comprehensive clue to 
the entire range of observations. It is compelled ac- 
cordingly to regard the three distinctive states recog- 
nized by Charcot as themselves the product of uncon- 
scious suggestion and of a contagious es2:)rit de corps 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 231 

of the Salpetriere subjects. The school of Nancy to- 
day enjoys the most extensive following ; and may 
be said to represent the dominant trend of present 
study. One may fairly say that the present j^sycholo- 
gical study in this domain is the study of suggestion, 
one form, though only one form, of which is hypnotic 
suggestion. With the complete realization of the psy- 
chological significance of the hypnotic state, the fierce 
and adventurous struggle for existence of hypnotism 
may be said to terminate in its undisturbed adaptation 
to a scientific environment. 

XI 

The history of the antecedents of hypnotism is rich 
in suggestiveness. For the historian of the inductive 
sciences it illustrates the influence of the circumstances 
accompanying a discovery upon the status of the dis- 
covery itself ; that the acceptance of a discovery de- 
pends more upon its logical concordance with current 
scientific conceptions, upon the manner of its demon- 
stration, than upon the intrinsic content of what is 
demonstrated. It is as difficult in science as in real 
life to escape the influences of unfortunate associates ; 
the interesting state which we now recognize as hypno- 
sis was naturally discredited when it consorted with 
animal magnetism and the marvels of somnambulism, 
but was recognized when its credentials were expressed 
in intelligible physiological and psychological terms. 
For the historian of human error the story is equally 
significant. It illustrates again that the mental atti- 
tude essentially influences truth and error alike ; that 
with all due allowance for ignorance, for faulty obser- 



232 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

vation, for defective organization of knowledge, error 
was due, more than to any of these, to the lack of suit- 
able concepts for the proper absorption and apprecia- 
tion of the phenomena in their true significance. For 
lack of these there was misconception and oversight, 
and in their stead prepossession by notions of a wholly 
irrelevant character. Such notions were fostered by 
what we retrospectively recognize as pseudo-science; 
such was the fictitious animal magnetism, an entity 
never demonstrated, but supported only by a superficial 
analogical plausibility. They were fostered also by 
the activity of the marvel-loving impulse, which is un- 
responsive to the uniformities of nature, and favors 
mystic fable, while overlooking sensible fact. " Wer 
unmogliches geglaubt, konnt unmogiiches verrichten." 
The special form of belief, the name of the system, the 
nature of the explanatory theory, seem almost acci- 
dental. Throughout all times, the same intense crav- 
ing to overthrow the limitations of the human mind 
has been present, and has been satisfied by much the 
same beliefs and theories. Mesmerism harks back to 
astrology ; prophets and seers have always existed ; the 
mystery of the attractive force of the magnet for long 
made magnetism a most popular explanation of any 
obscure phenomena ; the same performances that con- 
vinced the mesmerist of the existence of the magnetic 
fluid are evidence to the electro-biologist of the electro- 
vital force, of the " od " to the followers of Reichen- 
bach ; and — more striking still — the outfit of the 
modern spiritualistic medium, the trance, the clairvoy- 
ant discovery of one's private affairs, the reading of 
messages in sealed envelopes, the conversation with 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 233 

absent or departed friends, are all to be found in 
the annals of somnambulism. Truly, history repeats 
itself ; and the endless forms of mysticism, error, and 
extravagance seem immortal ; they change in form and 
accommodate themselves to the advance in knowledge 
and civilization, and parody the forms of statement 
and the methods of science in an age which has learned 
to be iuipressed with scientific demonstrations. 

For the special student of hypnotism no lesson of 
the history of its antecedents is more practically signifi- 
cant than its illumination of the extent, variety, and 
subtlety of unconscious suggestion. If Puysegur's 
subjects prescribe for their own ills and see without 
their eyes ; if Petetin's read what is placed on their 
stomachs ; or the interposition of poor electric-conduc- 
tors prevent manifestations ; if one of the subjects 
examined by the commission of 1784 could not be 
deprived of speech unless the magnetizing hand passed 
below his mouth ; if one of the Salpetriere subjects of 
1829 could be cured only by immersion in the river ; 
if Deleuze's subjects respond differently to the minute 
differences in manipulations, which he believed to be 
essential ; if the subjects whom Braid examined could 
prove the truth of phrenology, and the mesmerist's 
subjects feel the magnetic fluid streaming through 
their sj^stems ; if within recent times paralyses are 
transferred from one arm to the other by the action 
of a magnet, or Dr. Luys's subjects show the character- 
istic effects of a drug when a sealed vial containing it 
is placed upon the subject's neck, or respond to the 
puppets which he has manipulated, — surely it is as 
obvious that some spontaneous caprice of the subject 



234 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

or unconscious suggestions of the operator have origi- 
nated these notions, and that unconscious imitation has 
further contributed to their dissemination, as it is 
obvious that all these in part mutually contradictory 
phenomena cannot be true, objective facts. The sig- 
nificance of more recent investigations in allied fields 
still turns upon the factor which unconscious sugges- 
tion plays in their production. The advocates of 
telepathy, whether occurring under hypnotic or more 
normal conditions, feel confident that unconscious sug- 
gestion as well as all other sources of error have been 
eliminated ; the skeptical critics point out overlooked 
and novel modes of unconscious suggestion, and draw 
confidence from the history of the past, both of the 
unwarranted flight to improbable hypothesis on the 
basis of an alleged absence of a natural explanation, 
and of the solvent power which future investigation 
may hold in store. 

The story of the conquest of a realm of fable by a 
campaign of enlightenment is always a tale of interest. 
The opening of a new vista directs one's gaze outward 
over unexplored areas. It may be, as our seventeenth- 
century chronicler tells us, that "we are all Indians 
and Salvages in what we have not accustomed our 
senses," and that, " what was Conjuring in the last 
age is Mathematiques in this " ; but our more exten- 
sive acquaintance with the course of discovery and the 
demonstration of truth has given us a more logical 
sense of the probable and the improbable ; and the evo- 
lution by which conjuring becomes mathematics is more 
intimately understood. The recent establishment of 
hypnotism in its scientific aspects furnishes the proper 



HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS 235 

perspective for the comprehension of its antecedents ; it 
gives confidence that its future development will incor- 
porate the spirit of present research, as it will avoid 
the aberrations of the past ; and it gives to the story of 
its vicissitudes a timely pertinence as well as a psycho- 
logical significance. 



THE NATUKAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 



The origin of human endowment lies hidden in an 
obscure and unrecorded past ; the fact of development, 
of the gradual unfoldment of capacity, stands out con- 
spicuously throughout the historical record of human 
achievement, and is equally recognizable in the ex- 
tensive remains of prehistoric humanity. The story 
of the mental development of man is constructed 
from travelers' accounts of primitive peoples, from the 
records of early civilizations, from the sequences of 
thought and belief that are considered in the history 
of culture, from the study of the intellectual growth 
of childhood, from the observation of the less progres- 
sive elements of current civilizations. The present 
essay attempts to portray the status of one form of 
intellectual process, or of mental attitude, which char- 
acterizes undeveloped stages of human thought, and has 
played an important and variable part in the drama of 
mental evolution. I propose to present the " Natural 
History of Analogy," — meaning thereby the treat- 
ment, according to the methods of natural science, 
of a type of mental action, interesting at once as a 
psychological process, and again from its practical 
results as a factor in the anthropological history of the 
race. 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 237 

An analogy is a type o£ reasoning, and as such is 
referred to the logician for more precise definition. 
His briefest explanation of the term may be stated as 
the inference of a further degree of resemblance from 
an observed degree of resemblance ; the argument that 
because the Earth and Mars agree in the common pos- 
session of a solid crust, an atmosphere, presence of 
water, changes of season, the possibilities of rain and 
snow, and other observed qualities, they will also agree 
in the further respect of being inhabited. This may 
serve as an exemplar of the analogical argument in its 
purest and most developed form ; but in the survey 
of the varieties and distribution of this natural pro- 
duct of rationality, it will be necessary to include 
many forms of thought diverging more or less from, 
though always retaining, a recognizable relation to this 
tyi^e. The analogical inference, indeed, goes back to 
an inarticulate form, in which it merges into a feeling 
rather than an argument, a susceptibility to an influ- 
ence supported by undefined plausibility, rather than a 
conclusion from tangible evidence. But however lack- 
ing in definiteness or formulation, however uncon- 
sciously realized and barely expressible, the tendency 
or disposition to believe is communicated to others and 
becomes an influential factor in the ultimate fixation 
of belief and in the guidance of conduct. Logically 
considered, analogy is always a weak argument ; and 
becomes weaker, as the range of observed resemblance 
is more and more limited, as the resemblances belong 
to accidental, unessential traits, and as the underlying 
basis of the inference is removed from direct verifica- 
tion. Psychologically, its power to influence belief 



238 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

may be very strong, and when tliis is not the case, 
there still may exist a disposition to be influenced by 
analogical considerations, even when these are success- 
fully resisted or suppressed. The instinctive proclivity 
towards the use of analogies, whether it be logical or 
anti-logical in effect, forms an interesting psychological 
trait. Logic counsels how we may think most profit- 
ably and correctly ; psychology describes how we actu- 
ally do think or tend to think. The logician is the 
gardener bent upon training certain selected flowers 
according to an ideal standard, and eradicating all 
others as weeds ; while the psychologist is the botanist 
to whom all plants, weeds, and flowers alike are worthy 
objects of study, and who, indeed, traces significant 
resemblances between the despised weed and the choice 
flower. 

The natural history account of analogy will con- 
sider the status in less advanced stages of human de- 
velopment, and the evolution of this form of thought, 
which scientists to-day use only with the greatest cau- 
tion, and to which they at best assign but a limited 
and corroborative value. It will appear that analogy 
is dominant in primitive types of thought ; that it has 
an important cultural history ; and has left an unmis- 
takable impress upon many beliefs of our civilization, 
marked as obsolete, perhaps, in the dictionary of the 
cultured, but current still in the parlance of average 
and untutored humanity. 

II 

The great law of apperception, teaching that we 
observe according to our inherited capacities and our 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 239 

acquired experience, that we in a very real sense create 
the world in which we live, explains the difficulty of 
realizing modes of thought strikingly different from 
our own, either as more primitive, or more complex, or 
as based upon other perspectives of the social, intellec- 
tual, and ethical rules that guide thought and conduct. 
To the supremely civilized citizen of the nineteenth 
century, the mental life of one who has hardly a firm 
hold on the first round of the ladder of civilization is 
naturally somewhat incomprehensible. An illustration 
of the conspicuous contrast, though doubtless amidst an 
inherent community, of the thought-habits of untutored 
and of cultured man, may suggest the direction and 
the nature of the evolutionary development that sepa- 
rates, yet binds, the one and the other. Prominent 
among such contrasts is the different standing assumed 
by the facts and reasonings of science in primitive and 
in highly civilized life ; and an important part of this 
difference may be viewed as the shifting of the posi- 
tion occupied by the argument by analogy. Deeper 
than the language of words, and underlying their use 
and formation, is the habit of comparing object with 
object, of tracing resemblances and noting contrasts. 
It would seem that in the primitive use of this process 
there is lacking the distinction between the resemblances 
more strictly inherent in the objects and those originat- 
ing in the mode of viewing them ; subject and object 
are still merged in a vaguer realm of perception where 
myth and science, poetical fiction and evident fact, are 
as yet undifferentiated and mingle without let or hin- 
drance. The savage frames his world by the realization 
of simple fancies suggested by slight analogies, where 



240 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

the man of culture examines the objective causes of 
phenomena under the guidance of scientifically estab- 
lished principles and accurate logic. Fortunately, how- 
ever, for our power of realizing bygone mental traits, 
these forms of belief still find currency as survivals, in 
Mr. Tylor's apt words, " of the lower culture v/hich 
they are of to the higher culture which they are in." 
We thus can understand the belief we no longer share ; 
we can appreciate as suggestive myth or far-fetched 
analogy what to our ancestors may have been a plausi- 
ble belief or a satisfactory explanation. 

The prominence of analogy among undeveloped 
peoples supplies unlimited illustrations of the role which 
it plays in primitive circles, the essential influence 
which it exerts over thoughts and customs in the early 
history of mankind. Consider first that widespread 
class of customs and observances by which the savage 
regards himself as influencing for good or ill the fate 
of friend or foe. The Zulu chewing a bit of wood to 
soften the heart of the man he wishes to buy oxen from, 
or of the woman he is wooing (Tylor) ; the Illinois 
Indians making figures of those whose days they desire 
to shorten, and stabbing these images to the heart, or 
by performing incantations upon a stone trjdng to form 
a stone in the hearts of their enemies (Dorman) ; the 
Peruvian sorcerer, making rag dolls and piercing them 
with cactus-thorns, and hiding them about the beds to 
cripple people ; or the native of Borneo, making a wax 
figure of his enemy in the belief that as the image 
melts, the enemy's body will waste away (Tylor) ; the 
Zulu sorcerer who secures a portion of a desired victim's 
dress and buries it secretly, so that, as it rots away, his 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 241 

life may decay (Clodcl) ; the confession recorded in a 
seventeenth-century trial for witchcraft, that the ac- 
cused had " buried a glove of the said Lord Henry 
in the ground, so that as the glove did rot and waste, 
the liver of the said lord might rot and waste " 
(Brand) ; the New Britain sorcerer of to-day wh-o burns 
a castaway banana skin, so that he who carelessly left 
it unburied may die a tormenting death (Clodd) ; be- 
witching by operating upon a lock of hair or the 
parings of the finger-nails, and the consequent wide- 
spread custom of religiously preventing such personal 
scraps from falling into others' possession ; — all these 
varied forms of primitive witchcraft rest upon the 
notion that one kind of connection, one link of resem- 
blance, will bring with it others. The argument, if 
explicitly stated, as can hardly be done without doing 
violence to its instinctive force, may be put thus : 
this bit of wood or stone or lock of hair or scrap of 
clothing resembles this man or woman in that the one 
represents the other or that the one had a personal 
connection with the other ; therefore they will further 
resemble one another in that whatever will make the 
one soft and yielding or the other hard and unfeeling 
will have the same effect on the other, or in that what- 
ever is done to the one will happen to the other. Other 
considerations combine with this underlying analogical 
factor to impart cogency and plausibility to a belief 
or custom ; but the type of the logic, crooked though 
it be, is recognizable throughout. 

Another significant group of primitive beliefs, in- 
volving a similarly indirect argument by analogy, 
relates to the partaking of an animal for the sake of 



242 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

thus absorbing its typical qualities. The Malays eat 
tiger to acquire the sagacity as well as the cunning of 
that animal ; the Dyaks refuse to eat deer for fear of 
becoming faint-hearted ; the Caribs eschew pigs and 
tortoises for fear of having their eyes grow small 
(Lubbock) ; even cannibalism may be indulged in, in 
the hopes of absorbing the courage of a brave man, as 
in the case of Captain Wells, who was killed near 
Chicago in 1812, and whose body was cut up and dis- 
tributed among the Indians, " so that all might have 
the opportunity of getting a taste of the courageous 
soldier " (Clodd) ; and in an ancient Mexican rite, 
called the eating of the god, there occurs an elaborated 
and symbolical form of the same belief. 

The use of omens, the interpretation of signs and 
coincidences, forms another rich field for illustration 
of arguments by analogy. " Magical arts," says Mr. 
Tylor, " in which the connection is that of mere analogy 
or symbolism, are endlessly numerous throughout the 
course of civilization. Their common theory may 
be readily made out from a few typical cases, and 
thence applied confidently to the general mass. The 
Australian will observe the track of an insect near 
a grave to ascertain the direction where the sorcerer is 
to be found by whose craft the man died. . . . The 
Khondi sets up the iron arrow of the war god in a 
basket of rice, and judges from its standing upright 
that war must be kept up also, or from its falling that 
the quarrel may be let fall too ; and when he tortures 
human victims sacrificed to the earth goddess he rejoices 
to see them shed plentiful tears, which betoken copious 
showers to fall upon his land." *' In the burial cere- 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 243 

monies of tlie natives of Alaska, if too many tears were 
shed they said that the road of the dead would be 
muddy, but a few tears just laid the dust " (Dorman). 
" The Zapotecs had a very curious manner of selecting 
a manitou for a child, at its birth. When a woman 
was about to be delivered, the relatives assembled in 
the hut and commenced to draw on the floor figures of 
different animals, rubbing out each one as fast as com- 
pleted. The one that remained at the time of the 
birth was called the child's second self, and as soon 
as grown up he procured the animal, and believed his 
health and existence bound up with it" (Dorman). 
The taking of omens by the flight of birds or the 
tracks of animals, by the sky, by the inspection of sac- 
rifices, by the trivial happenings of daily life, abound in 
savage ceremonials, and in a fair proportion of cases 
carry with them the rationale of their origin, that 
saves them from being mere caprice. And in all 
those endless appeals to chance or lot for the detection 
of crime, the unfoldment of the future, the prediction 
of the issue of disease or of important tribal events, 
there is always some underlying link of connection 
between the kind of omen or the nature of its interpre- 
tation and the issue it signifies ; and this connection it 
is, however slight or fanciful, that maintains the belief 
in the further bond of omen and issue. 

Ill 

That such connections may travel still farther along 
the path of analogy without losing force, is well illus- 
trated in the observances regarding the use of names. 
The connection seems to pass from thing to image, to 



244 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

name, much as picture-writing passes into word-writing. 
The use of idols is abundant evidence of the extent of 
this mental oj)eration ; what is done to or for the idol 
is analogically transferred to the god, and the confusion 
may become so gross that when the oracles of two gods 
disagree, their idols are knocked against each other, and 
the one that breaks is declared in the wrong. A draw- 
ing or other rough resemblance may do service for the 
thing, especially in sacrifices of objects of value. By 
similar steps the name becomes an essential portion of 
the object or person named, and analogies formed 
through the name are applied to the thing. Accord- 
ingly, a man may be bewitched through his name ; 
hence there arise the most elaborate and rigid obser- 
vances prohibiting the use of the name, which are 
grouped together in the complex code of the Taboo, 
— that " dread tyrant of savage life, . . . the Inqui- 
sition of the lower culture, only more terrible and 
effective than the infamous ' Holy Office ' " (Clodd). 
For uncomplicated illustrations of name analogies, 
however, we must go to other customs than the Taboo. 
It is related that in the British war with Nepaul, Goree 
Sail had sent orders to " find out the name of the com- 
mander of the British army ; write it upon a piece of 
paper ; take it some rice and turmeric ; say the great 
incantation three times ; having said it, send for some 
plum-tree wood, and therewith burn it ; " thus was the 
life of the commander to be destroyed. Similarly it 
was suspected that the King of Dahomey refused to 
sign a letter, written in his name to the President of 
the French Republic, for fear that M. Carnot might 
bewitch him through it (cited by Clodd). " Barbaric 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 245 

man believes that his name is a vital part of himself, 
and therefore that the names of other men and of 
superhuman beings are also vital parts of themselves. 
He further believes that to know the name is to put 
its owner, whether he be deity, ghost, or mortal, in the 
power of another, involving risk of harm or destruction 
to the named. He therefore takes all kinds of precautions 
to conceal his name, often from his friend, and always 
from his foe " (Clodd). In Borneo the name of a sickly 
child is changed to deceive the evil spirits that torment it. 
" When the life of a Kwapa Indian is supposed to be 
in danger from illness, he at once seeks to get rid of 
his name, and sends to another member of the tribe, 
who goes to the chief and buys a new name, which is 
given to the patient. With the abandonment of the 
old name it is believed that the sickness is thrown 
off. ' On the reception of the new name the patient 
becomes related to the Kwapa who purchased it. Any 
Kwapa can change or abandon his personal name four 
times, but it is considered *bad luck to attempt such 
a thing for the fifth time ' " (Clodd). The Mohawk 
chief can confer no higher honor on his visitor than by 
giving him his name, with which goes the right of 
regarding the chief's fame and deeds of valor as his 
own. A Tahitian chief became so smitten with Steven- 
son's charms that he assumed Stevenson's name; in 
exchange Stev^enson took the name of the chief, and 
in one of his letters signs himself, " Teritera, which 
he was previously known as Robert Louis Stevenson." 
When totem and tribal names are assumed to obtain 
the qualities of the animal namesake, or the reverence 
due to the person is transferred to the name, and when 



246 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

incantations and the utterances of mystic formulae 
are granted like efficacy as the manipulation of the 
things themselves, we see the operation of the mental 
law under discussion ; though it is still more saliently 
illustrated in the more artificialized practices of the 
Chinese physician, who, for lack of a desired drug, 
will " write the prescription on a piece of paper and 
let the sick man swallow its ashes or an infusion of 
the writing in water ; " or of the Moslem who expects 
relief from a decoction in which a verse of the Koran 
written on paper has been washed (Tylor). 

What is true of names is also regarded as true of 
other representatives or embodiments of personality — 
the footprint, the drawing, the image, the shadow. 
"Broken bottle ends or sharp stones are put, in Russia 
and in Austria, in the footprints of a foe, for the purpose 
of laming him (Lang) ; or a nail may be driven into a 
horse's footprint to make him go lame " (Grinrni). The 
Ojibways practice magic "by drawing the figure of any 
person in sand or clay, or by considering any object as 
the figure of a person, and then pricking it with a 
sharp stick or other weapon; . . . the person thus 
represented will suffer likewise " (Dorman). The same 
idea appears in King James's " Demonology," in which 
he speaks of " the devil teaching how to make pictures 
of wax or clay, that by roasting thereof the persons 
that they bear the name of may be continually melted 
or dried away by sickness ; " and even now Highland 
crofters perforate the image of an enemy with pins. 
The same idea finds a tangible illustration in the col- 
lection of objects in the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford 
(suck as a pig's heart from Devonshire, with pins stuck 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 247 

into it), which were used for a like purpose. And 
Catlings story of the accusation brought against him 
by the Yukons, that he had made buffaloes scarce by 
putting so many pictures of them in his book, may bo 
paralleled by the .stories gathered from Scotland to 
Somerset, of " ill health or ill luck which followed the 
camera, of folks who ' took bad and died ' after being 
'a-too'kt'" (Clodd). "The Basuto avoids the river- 
bank, lest, as his shadow falls on the water, a crocodile 
may seize it and harm the owner. In Wetar Island, 
near Celebes, the magicians profess to make a man ill 
by spearing or stabbing his shadow ; the Arabs believe 
that if a hyaena treads on a shadow, it deprives the 
man of the power of speech ; and in modern Roumania 
the ancient custom of burying a victim as sacrifice to 
the earth-spirit under any new structure has a survival 
in the builder enticing some passer-by to draw near, so 
that his shadow is thrown on the foundation-stone, the 
belief being that he will die within the year" (Clodd). 
To the underlying notions thus variously embodied 
may be applied Mr. Clodd's characterization : they 
form "a part of that general confusion between the 
objective and the subjective — in other words, between 
names and things, or between symbols and realities — 
which is a universal feature of barbaric modes of 
thought. This confusion attributes the qualities of 
living things to things not living ; it lies at the root 
of all fetichism and idolatry; of all witchcraft. Shaman- 
ism, and other instruments which are as keys to the 
invisible kingdom of the dreaded." It is in such an 
atmosphere that the philosophy of analogy rules with 
undisputed sway. 



248 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

"Ideas are universal, incidents are local," says Mr. 
Clodd, in speaking of the diffusion of folk-lore tales. 
The same is true of thought tendencies. We may 
realize more intimately the analogical potency of names 
by recalling their survivals from the solemn uses of 
curses and excommunications, to the charms carried 
about the person consisting of magic or cabalistic 
writing, to the playful or the serious German usage of 
saying unherufen and rapping three limes under the 
table if a word or thought " tempting Providence " has 
fallen from the lips. Clearly, if we follow analogy as a 
guide, there is much in a name. 

IV 

We may next proceed to more general uses of the 
analogical trait, — more general because the special 
analogical appropriateness of thought or custom is no 
longer so apparent, but requires to be viewed more as 
a special and, it may be, a somewhat arbitrary applica- 
tion of a principle, itself supported or believed in on 
analogical grounds. Metaphor and simile and symbol- 
ism may be based upon the same types of resemblances 
that underlie analogy, but it is desirable, so far as may 
be possible, to hold these distinct ; yet what is metaphor 
to us may still be analogy to others. 

When we speak of a head of cabbage, the trunk of 
a tree, or the legs of a table, we understand that we 
have applied these names on the basis of resemblances 
to objects to which the names more strictly belong, and 
there is no thought that the name carries with it any 
further connection; bat when the Chinese doctor ad- 
ministers the heads, middle parts, and roots of plants, 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 249 

for the heads, bodies, and legs of his patients respec- 
tively, he is clearly led to do so by a vague sense 
of analogical fitness, by a feeling that the bodily 
similarities are indicative of further connection of a 
quasi-causal type. This kind of reasoning abounds in 
primitive ceremonials, in which the appropriateness of 
the observances and of the elements of the ritual depend 
upon resemblances or symbolical suggestiveness. It is 
difficult to find instances of this trait in which a more 
or less conscious symbolism is excluded, for we know 
how readily the savage mind, in its somewhat more 
developed stages, uses this mode of thought, as is 
evidenced by the ingenuity of their picture-writing, 
gesture-language, and tribal systems. But apart from 
symbolical procedures, in which the unreality of the 
underlying resemblances is half acknowledged, we may 
note the application of such general principles as that 
unusual phenomena have unusual significance, and that 
to accomplish important objects drastic means and rare 
substances must be employed ; that operations and 
remedies will be effective according to their divergence 
from the usual and the common experience of man- 
kind. The influence of this principle is traceable in 
the bizarre fancies and grotesque performances of sav- 
ages, as also in the reverence shown to the belongings 
of the white man and the curious uses to which they 
are put. In their ritual observances, as well as in 
medical practice, the same principle is involved ; a 
sinole illustration will suffice to recall this well-known 
form of thought. Dorman cites the fate of an Indian 
warrior brought to camp after a most disastrous en- 
counter with a grizzly bear. To repair his very serious 



250 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

injuries " tlie doctor compounded a medicine that really 
oug-ht to have worked wonders. It was made by boiling 
together a collection of miscellaneous weeds, a handful 
of chewing tobacco, the heads of four rattlesnakes, and 
a select assortment of worn-out moccasins. The decoc- 
tion thus obtained was seasoned with a little crude 
petroleum and a large quantity of red pepper, and the 
patient was directed to take a pint of the mixture 
every half hour. He was a brave man, conspicuous 
for his fortitude under suffering, but after taking his 
first dose he turned over and died with the utmost 
expedition." 

Another one of these general principles may have 
been suggested by the failure of the ordinary omens ; 
and thus the conclusion was reached that the analogy 
proceeds not according to resemblance but by contrast. 
For example, the Zulus, when dreaming "of a sick man 
that he is dead, . . . say, ' because we have dreamt of 
his death he will not die.' But if they dream of a 
wedding dance it is the sign of a funeral. So the 
Maoris hold that a kinsman dreamt of as dying will 
recover, but to see him well is a sign of death. Both 
races thus worked out, by the same crooked logic that 
guided our own ancestors, the axiom that dreams go by 
contraries " (Tylor). It will be seen in later portions 
of our exposition that these and other general principles 
of an analogical type have lost none of their potency in 
their more modern or more erudite phases. 



The parallelism between the mental development of 
the individual and of the race, though necessarily in- 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 251 

complete, is yet deeply suggestive and significant. In 
a very true sense the unfoldment of mental faculty 
from childhood to maturity reflects the allied course of 
evolution from savagery to civilization ; yet the re- 
flection is distorted and is traceable only in general 
outlines. Undeveloped forms of thought and instinc- 
tive tendencies, of a related though by no means of an 
identical character, should be traceable in each ; and 
among them the natural proclivity for dependence 
upon analogies. That children are fond of reasoning 
by analogy there can be no doubt ; their confusion of 
fact with fancy, their lack of extensive knowledge and 
the ability to refer effects to proper causes, their great 
love for sound effects and play of words, the earnestness 
of their play convictions — all these furnish a rich soil 
for the growth of such habits of thought as we are now 
considering. On the other hand, the influence of their 
adult companions, of their conventional surroundings, 
of the growth of the make-believe sentiment by which 
the laws of the real world are differentiated from those 
of fairy-land, make it difficult to pronounce as an argu- 
ment by analogy what may really be a half -conscious 
play of fancy or jugglery of words and ideas. There 
is, further, considerable difficulty in collecting charac- 
teristic and unimpeachable illustrations of arguments 
by analogy in children, owing to the general lack of 
suitable collections of children's spontaneous and origi- 
nal mental reactions. What fond parents are apt to 
observe and newspaper paragraphers to record are 
sayings that amuse by a quaintness or the assumption 
of a worldly wisdom beyond their years, while the truly 
suggestive traits pass unrecorded for lack of psycho- 



252 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

logically informed observers. There is thus a gap 
to be supplied by valuable and suggestive study of 
analogy in childhood. However, not to pass by the 
topic without illustration, I may cite the reply of the 
little boy who, when asked his age, said he was nine 
when he stood on his feet but six when he stood on his 
head, because an inverted 9 makes a 6 ; he was cer- 
tainly reasoning by a far-fetched analogy, however 
little faith he may have had in the correctness of his 
reasoning. The children who believed that butter 
comes from butterflies, and grass from grasshoppers, 
beans from bees, and kittens from pussy-wiUows (Stan- 
ley Hall), may have been simply misled by sound 
analogies ; but when Sir John Lubbock tells us of a 
little girl saying to her brother, " If you eat so much 
goose you will be quite silly," and adds that, " there 
are perhaps few children to whom the induction would 
not seem perfectly legitimate," we appreciate that such 
arguments, so closely paralleling the superstitions of 
savages, may be more real to children than we suspect. 

VI 

We may now enter in the search for reasonings by 
analogy into a field of greatest interest to the student 
of the history of culture ; namely, the household tradi- 
tions, the superstitions, and the pseudo-scientific sys- 
tems, that originated among our ancestors, remote or 
immediate, and are still far from obsolete in all but 
the upper strata of our civilization. This portion of 
the theme indeed presents an embarras de richesses, 
and the illustrations to be cited form but an insignifi- 
cant share of those that could readily be collected. 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 253 

Certainly more than one chapter of the history of 
human error could be profitably devoted to those due 
to an unwarranted use of the argument by analogy. 

We may begin by taking a flying excursion into that 
body of superstitions and folk-lore customs which no 
nation, however high or low in the scale of civilization, 
is without. The widespread custom of carrying baby 
upstairs before being taken to the lower floors of the 
house, so that he may be successful in life and partici- 
pate in its ups rather than its downs, rests upon baby- 
logic indeed. The belief that if baby keeps his fists 
tightly closed he will be stingy, but if he holds an open 
palm he will be generous, likewise requires no interpre- 
tation. It is forbidden, too, to measure a child, for 
measuring it is measuring it for its coflin. To the 
German peasant, if a dog howls looking downward it 
means death, if upward recovery from sickness. " The 
Hessian lad thinks that he may escape the conscription 
by carrying a baby-girl's cap in his pocket — a symbolic 
way of repudiating manhood." '' Fish,"' says the Cor- 
nishman, " should be eaten from the tail to the head, 
to bring other fishes' heads towards the shore, for eating 
them the wrong way turns them from the coast." " It 
is still plain," says Mr. Tylor, from whom I have cited 
some of these examples, " why the omen of the crow 
should be different on the right or left hand, why a 
vulture should mean rapacity ; a stork, concord ; a 
pelican, piety ; an ass, labor ; why the fierce, conquer- 
ing wolf should be a good omen, and the timid hare a 
bad one ; why bees, types of an obedient nation, should 
be lucky to a king, while flies returning, however often 
they are driven off, should be signs of importunity and 



254 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

impudence." And as parallels to these signs, in the 
vegetable world, one may cite the amaranth as signify- 
ing immortality ; ivy, strength ; cypress, woe ; helio- 
trope, attachment ; aspen, fear ; aloes, bitterness ; while 
through more artificial associations the laurel becomes 
the sign of renown ; the rose, of love ; the olive, of 
peace ; and the palm, of victory. 

Less directly analogical are the customs of a semi- 
symbolic character, depending upon a mysterious or 
potent sympathy. Thus, in " Bavaria, flax will not 
thrive unless it is sown by women, and this has to be 
done with strange ceremonies, including the scattering 
over the field of the ashes of a fire made of wood con- 
secrated during matins. As high as the maids jump 
over the fires on the hilltops on Midsummer Night, so 
high will the flax grow ; but we find also that as high 
as the bride springs from the table on her marriage 
night, so high will the flax grow in that year." This 
is paralleled by the custom, recorded by Mr. Frazer, 
current in the interior of Sumatra. There " the rice is 
sown by women who, in sowing, let the hair hang loose 
down their backs, in order that the rice may grow 
luxuriantly and have long stalks." It is hardly neces- 
sary to continue these illustrations, which will at once 
suggest others, with which the wealth of superstitious lore 
overflows ; nor do they require elaborate interpretation ; 
the resemblances involved may be fanciful or symbolic, 
obvious or obscure, superficial or intrinsic, natural or 
artificial, but the subtle and protean bases of analogy 
become recognizable as soon as the mind is directed 
towards their detection. 

It will be more profitable to limit the inquiry to a 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 255 

few groups of beliefs, which have been more or less 
fully elaborated into systems. Of these the interpreta- 
tion of dreams offers a promising harvest of analogies. 
This practice has a venerable history, the study of 
which would constitute an interesting task for the 
patient student of the by-paths of human culture. I 
shall draw only from the contemporaneous survivals of 
this ancient lore, the dream-books purchasable in every 
city and village. 

My selections from this literature have been made 
with a view of presenting the typical kinds of analogy 
through which modern dream omens are believed in 
and through which this kind of reading finds a sale. 
*' To dream of using glue," an authority tells us, " fore- 
tells imprisonment for yourself or friend ; " and this 
because a prison and glue are alike in that it is diffi- 
cult to be released from the hold of either. Similarly, 
because the pineapple has a rough and forbidding ap- 
pearance it becomes in dreams the omen of " crosses 
and troubles." This seems hardly more than a play 
of words ; indeed, we have here touched one of the 
many points where metaphor and analogy meet. For 
instance, we commonly speak of the ladder of success 
and the ups and downs of fortune ; the dream-book 
tells us that " to dream of going up a ladder foretells 
the possession of wealth ; coming down, of poverty." 
The common phrase of " mud-slinging " is thus inter- 
preted by the dream-books, "to dream of dirty dirt or 
mud signifies that some one will speak ill of you. If 
some one throws dirt on you it foretells that you will 
be abused." To the same category belong the dream- 
book maxims, that " to dream of being mounted on 



256 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

stilts denotes that you are puffed up with vain pride ; " 
" to dream that you gather fruit from a very old tree 
is generally supposed to prognosticate that you will 
succeed to the wealth of* some ancient person ; if you 
dream of a clock and the hands stop it means death ; 
if the hands keep moving, recovery ; " " to dream of a 
concert means a life of harmony with one you love." 
So, too, various objects become significant of their 
striking characteristics : the earthworm, from its habits 
of underground and secret destruction, denotes " secret 
enemies that endeavor to ruin and destroy us ; " and 
all strongly redolent food, such as onions, garlic, and 
leek, easily betraying the one who has partaken of 
them, becomes indicative of the betrayal of secrets and 
the like. Mr. Dyer cites some apt lines in which the 
logic is about as meritorious as the verse : — 

" To dream of eating- onions means 
Much strife in thy domestic scenes ; 
Secrets found out or else betrayed, 
And many falsehoods made and said." 

From Mr. Tylor's collection of dream omens of 
similar character I cull the following : " to wash the 
hands denotes release from anxieties ; " " to have one's 
feet cut off prevents a journey ; " " he who dreams he 
has lost a tooth shall lose a friend ; " " he that dreams 
that a rib is taken out of his side shall ere long see the 
death of his wife ; " to dream of swimming and wading 
in the water is good, so that the head be kept above 
water. A good share of the omens depend upon con- 
trasts and not upon resemblances : " to be married de- 
notes some of your kinsfolk are dead ; " "to dream of 
death denotes happiness and long life;" and so on. 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 257 

Others of these dream-book analogies depend rather 
upon verbal resemblance, and still others involve re- 
semblances too subtle and peculiar to be readily ex- 
plained. There is perhaps nothing more underlying 
the dictum that " dreaming about Quakers means that 
you will meet a friend soon " than the fact that the 
Quakers are a " Society of Friends ; " a little more 
elaborate punning underlies the prediction that " to 
dream of a dairy showeth the dreamer to be of a milk- 
sop nature;" and finally what a curious mixture of 
perverted analogy is reflected in the notion that to 
dream of " a zebra indicates a checkered life " ! 

The great parts that names and numbers play in 
superstitions of all kinds is so familiar that a few in- 
stances will be sufficient. It is well to bear in mind 
that these number and name predictions, in the course 
of their venerable and eventful lives, have been sys- 
tematized, and the gaps in the system supplied by 
arbitrary associations. Thus the modern fortune-tell- 
ing books have an omen for each one of a pack of 
cards, or a set of dominoes, in which we find, among 
what seems little more than an arbitrary assignment of 
the ordinary events of life, good and bad, pleasant and 
unpleasant, important and trivial, — among the several 
cards or dominoes, here and there some underlying 
basis of analogy ; hearts relate to love affairs, diamonds 
to wealth ; kings and queens play important roles ; 
the jack is about as often a lover as a knave ; threes 
and sevens have special significance ; and double 
throws in dice, especially the two sixes, have import- 
ant consequences. So in folk-lore, operations, to be 
effective, must be done just three times, or thrice 



258 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

three, or seven. The seventh child of a seventh child 
has special powers, as we all know. The twelfth hour 
that divides night from day is a momentous instant, 
as is also the time of the cock's crow. "Against a 
warty eruption the leeches advised the patient to take 
seven wafers and write on each wafer, Maximianus, 
Malchus, Johannes, Martinianus, Dionysius, Constan- 
tinus, Serafion ; then a charm was to be sung to the 
man, and a maiden was afterwards to hang it about his 
neck " (Black). In a similar strain the dream-book 
informs us that if a number of young women, not less 
than three nor more than seven, assemble on a certain 
night, and if, as the hour strikes eleven, they each take 
a sprig of myrtle and throw it, together with nine hairs 
from the head, upon a live coal, and if they go to bed 
at exactly twelve o'clock, they will dream of their future 
husbands as a reward of their pains and their mathe- 
matical accuracy. Not a few of number and name 
ceremonials are invested with their power by religious 
associations ; the ill luck of thirteen and of Friday is 
commonly regarded as due to this source. In the 
northern English countries, witches are said to dislike 
the bracken fern, because it bears on its roots the ini- 
tial C (indicating Christ), which may be seen on cut- 
ting the root horizontally (Dyer). The clover, on 
account of its trefoil form, suggesting trinity, is like- 
wise good against witches (Dj^er). A like explana- 
tion seems applicable to the efficacy of the cross and 
the cross-roads, both of which enter, in a variety of 
ways, into folk-lore beliefs and customs. While num- 
bers and names and definite associations seldom form 
the whole basis of analogy by which the belief becomes 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 259 

plausible, they very frequently enter to emphasize and 
give point to practices suggested on other grounds. 
The argument involved in the number analogy is ex- 
tremely simple ; it is nothing more than because two 
phenomena have in common the association with the 
same number, therefore they will be connected in fur- 
ther respects. This slender line of connection affects 
the minute code of superstitious action, and forms the 
thread whereon are strung momentous omens, power- 
ful recipes, dire predictions, and wise precautions 
against various imaginary dangers. 

The logic by which the treatments current in folk- 
medicine acquire their efficacy is passing strange ; 
at first acquaintance with this wonderland we are apt 
to imagine ourselves in some weird topsy-turvydom, 
where everything uncanny and incongruous is greedily 
collected, and the most bizarre and trivial doings be- 
come endowed with marvelous efficacy. Upon closer 
acquaintance we discover some little order in the med- 
ley, and, in spite of much that remains arbitrary and 
capricious, we begin to trace the analogies according 
to which the various treatments are composed and the 
potions concocted. The common connection of toads 
with warts, both as giving and curing them, is due to 
nothing more than the warty appearance of the toad's 
skin ; similarly, in Gloucestershire, against ear-ache a 
snail is pricked and the froth that exudes dropped into 
the patient's ear (Black) ; and this by reason of the 
snail-like passages in the ear. Fevers being connected 
with heat and blood, and both these closely associated 
with red, red things become efficacious in diseases 
characterized by fever. That this should be especially 



260 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

in vogue against scarlet fever is no more than natural ; 
and it is related that when the son of Edward II. 
was sick of the small-pox, the physician directed that 
the bed-furniture should be red (Black). Other forms 
of such associations will be met with in the discussion 
of the doctrines of signatures and sympathies. 

Folk-medicine forms a particularly apt field for the 
application of the two general forms of analogy indi- 
cated as prevalent among savages : analogies by con- 
trast and the assignment of unusual effects to uncom- 
mon causes. If something is done with the right hand, 
doing it with the left reverses the action ; one set of 
directions applies to men and contrary ones to women ; 
saying a thing backwards is particularly efficacious. 
The prescription against hiccough, that you should 
" cross the front of the left shoe with the forefinger of 
the right hand while you repeat the Lord's prayer 
backwards " (Black) may serve to illustrate the one 
crooked type of argument, while for the other we have 
only to recall the Shakespeare witches, with their — 

" Round about the cauldron go ; 
In the poison'd entrails throw. 
Toad, that under coldest stone, 
Days and nights has thirty-one 
Swelter'd venom sleeping got, 
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot ! 
Fillet of a fenny snake, 
In the cauldron boil and bake ; 
Eye of newt and toe of frog. 
Wool of bat and tongue of dog. 
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, 
Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing, 
For a charm of powerful trouble, 
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 261 

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf ; 
Witches' mummy ; maw and gulf, 
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark ; 
Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark ; 
Liver of blaspheming- Jew ; 
Gall of goat, and slips of yew, 
Silvered in the moon's eclipse ; 
Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips ; 
Finger of birth-strangled babe. 
Ditch deliver'd by a drab, — 
Make the gruel thick and slab ; 
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron, 
For the ingredients of our cauldron. 
Cool it with the baboon's blood. 
Then the charm is firm and good." 

VII 

From folk-medicine to false and absurd forms of reme- 
dial systems, the transition is slight. For present pur- 
poses the most instructive of such systematized beliefs 
is the doctrine of sympathy, of which the most familiar 
survival is the phrase, " to take a hair of the dog that 
bit you." The system appeared in various phases and 
at various times. We find Paracelsus a believer in it 
in the form of a " weapon salve," which is to be applied 
to the weapon that caused the wound and thereby to 
heal the wound ; weapon and wound having once been 
related as cause and effect, this relation is supposed 
to insure further connection. The system found wide 
circulation through the efforts of Sir Kenelm Digby. 
While Sir Kenelm's practices involved bad observation 
and ignorance of medicine, what gave the method its 
plausibility and induced the faulty observation was an 
underlying belief in the argument by analogy. His 
treatment may be gathered from a story he tells of a 



262 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

Mr. Howell, whose hand was cut in an attempt to stop a 
duel between friends. Sir Kenelm arrives on the scene 
and asks for anything that had the blood upon it ; he 
is given the garter wherewith the hand was first bound ; 
this he places in a basin of water, when suddenly Mr. 
Howell, who is unaware of what is going on, experi- 
ences a cooling effect and a relief from pain. When 
the garter is placed before a great fire, Mr. Howell 
experiences an intense burning in the wound. Still 
another form of this idea appears in the " sympathetic 
alphabet," in which each of two friends cuts out a piece 
of his skin and has it transferred to the other ; on this 
grafted skin an alphabet is tattooed, and when a letter 
is pricked on the skin of the one friend, the other feels 
the pain at the corresponding point ; and thus inter- 
course is established. A still more curious form of 
the doctrine appears in an out-of-the-way pamphlet ; 
its title (a German translation from the French) is 
" The Thought Telegraph : or the instantaneous com- 
munication of thought at any distance, even from one 
end of the world to the other, by means of a portable 
machine. The most wonderful invention of our age." 
The true basis of the method, we are told, depends 
upon a " sympathetic-galvano, magnetic, mineral, ani- 
mal, adamitic fluid ; " the practice depends upon the 
alleged discovery of a species of snails, placed in a sym- 
pathetic relation, so that ever after their movements 
are in harmony. Accordingly each operator takes one 
of the snails and places it upon the alphabet chart; 
the snail crawls over the chart resting upon certain 
letters, and the other snail, however far removed, will 
do just the same, and thus the thought-telegraph will 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 263 

be established. Like Charles the Second's famous 
fish, that would not add to the weight of a dish of 
water in which it was placed, it lacks nothing but truth 
to be a great invention. Practices of the same general 
nature are still current ; in the Netherlands, the knife 
that cut one is rubbed with fat in the belief that as 
the fat dries the wound will heal. The relation may 
become more remotely analogical and more arbitrary, 
as when, to cure ague, as many notches are cut in a 
stick as there have been fits ; as the stick dries the ague 
is to disappear ; ruptured children are passed through 
a split tree, and thus a sympathy is produced be- 
tween child and tree, so that as the tree heals the child 
will be cured. A like sympathy is supposed to exist 
between celestial objects and human events ; this is 
particularly applied to the moon, the moon's growth 
and wane indicating the fortunate times for growth 
and decay of earthly things. One must sow grain, cut 
the hair, and perform sundry other operations with the 
increase of the moon, to insure increase of growth. 
The tides are similarly significant, as the ever-pathetic 
Barkis " going out with the tide " sufficiently illus- 
trates. 

While in the doctrine of sympathy, the resemblance 
basal to the analogy is one of relation, — such as the 
relation of cause and effect, of owner and the object 
owned, of implement and the action performed by its 
use, — in the doctrine of seals or signatures, the re- 
semblance is an outward, usually a visible one, of 
form, color, or the possession of marked peculiarities. 
Underlying this doctrine seems to be the belief that no 
object or event is without profound significance for 



264 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

man's welfare. The key to this significance is to b© 
found in a resemblance obvious or remote, actual or 
ideal. Hence the uses of things are suggested by their 
appearance. The euphrasia or eyebright is useful in 
case of sore eyes on account of the bright eye-like spot 
in its corolla ; special virtues are ascribed to the gin- 
seng on account of the resemblance of its roots to a 
human shape. The granulated roots of the white 
meadow saxifrage were regarded as efficacious against 
calculous complaints. The Solomon's-seal is so called 
on account of the marks in the cross-section of its 
roots, and is used to seal wounds. Water-soldier, on 
account of its sword-shaped leaves, was regarded as 
iiseful for gunshot wounds. The red rose suggests its 
use in blood diseases ; and yellow flowers were used in 
jaundice and liver complaints. The walnut was clearly 
defined for use in mental diseases : for its shape was 
that of the head, the outer green covering being the 
pericranium, the hard shell the skull, and the kernel 
the brain. Old ladies' thistle was for stitches in the 
side, nettle tea for nettle-rash, hearts' -ease for heart 
troubles. Plants whose parts resembled teeth were 
prescribed for toothache, quaking grass against shakes, 
and so on with consistent illogicality (Dyer). The 
resemblances here involved are obvious enough ; they 
are just such as underlie popular names of plants and 
the metaphorical use of terms. They form another 
illustration of how metaphor and analogy overlap ; 
what we accept as a sufficient suggestion for an appro- 
priate name was by pseudo-science, by folk-lore, or by 
superstition regarded as sufficiently significant to sup- 
port a cause-and-effect-like or a teleological relation. 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 265 

This, furthermore, is a line of practice in which modern 
superstition and savage belief stand on an equal foot- 
ing; the prescriptions just cited are matched by the 
operations of the Cherokee, who make " a decoction of 
the cone-flower for weak eye8 because of the fancied 
resemblance of that plant to the strong-sighted eye of 
the deer " (Clodd) ; who carry out the notion more 
elaborately when they " drink an infusion of the tena- 
cious burrs of the common beggars'-lice, an American 
species of the genus Desmodium, to strengthen the 
memory," or to " insure a fine voice, boil crickets and 
drink the liquor " (Clodd). The *' Zulu medicine- 
man, who takes the bones of the oldest bull or dog of 
the tribe, giving scrapings of these to the sick, so that 
their lives may be prolonged to old age," in turn finds 
a parallel in the seventeenth-century doctors, '' who, 
with less logic, but perchance unconscious humor, gave 
their patients pulverized mummy to prolong their 
years" (cited by Clodd). Analogy in savagery, in 
pseudo-science, and in undeveloped science, in super- 
stition and in survival, are of a nature all compact. 

The transition from magic to science was made 
possible by, and itself illustrates the supplanting of, 
loose and false reasoning by close and logical thought ; 
the pseudo-sciences represent weak and erroneous infer- 
ence even more than they embody defective observation 
or mere ignorance. An over-dependence upon analogy 
characterizes some portions of them all, and finds its 
fullest development in astrology, as also in the various 
forms of alchemy and magic with which it is historically 
connected. Although this body of thought engaged 
the energies of many able and famous scholars, we 



266 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

can look upon it only as a system of resemblances and 
coincidences, elaborate and complex indeed, but requir- 
ing little more than a vivid imagination and a some- 
what keen sense for far-fetched analogies. " This in- 
vestigation," says the astrologer in Rydberg's " Magic 
of the Middle Ages," " relies on the resemblances of 
things, for this similarity is derived from a correspon- 
dence, and causality is interwoven with correspondence. 
Thus, for instance, we judge from the resemblance 
between the splendor of gold and that of the sun, that 
gold has its celestial correspondence in that luminary 
and sustains to it a causal relation." Again, *'the 
two-horned beetle bears a causal relation to the moon, 
which at its increase and wane is also two-horned ; and 
if there were any doubt of this intimate relation be- 
tween them, it must vanish when we learn that the 
beetle hides its eggs in the earth for the space of 
twenty-eight days, or just so long a time as is required 
for the moon to pass through the zodiac, but digs them 
up again on the twenty-ninth, when the moon is in 
conjunction with the sun." (Agrippa, " De Occulta 
Philosophic," i. 24.) 

It will readily be seen how limitless are the results 
obtainable with such a system. Each planet becomes 
associated with a definite part of the body, and an 
argument such as the following becomes possible : 
" Since Capricornus, which presided over the knees in 
the house of Saturn, and all crawling animals are 
connected with the planet, the fat of snakes is an effec- 
tive remedy against gout in the knees, especially on 
Saturday, the day of Saturn " (Rydberg). Tables of 
correspondences were freely devised showing the repre- 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 267 

sentatives of the sun, moon, and five planets among the 
elements, the microcosm, animals, plants, metals, and 
stones. Thus Mars was represented in these spheres 
respectivel}^, by fire, acid juices, beasts of prey, burning, 
poisonous and stinging plants, iron or sulphuric metals, 
diamond, jasper, amethyst, and magnet ; the vein of 
analogy lying in the fierce character of the god, whose 
name the planet bears. This idea of correspondence 
dominates the queer collection of odds and ends by 
which the old-time magician worked his charms. 
'' Here," for instance, he would say, " is a plate of lead 
on which is engraved the symbol of a planet ; and 
beside it a leaden flask containing gall. If I now take 
a piece of fine onyx marked with the same planet 
symbol and this dried cypress branch, and add to them 
the skin of a snake and the feather of an owl, you will 
need but to look into one of the tables given you to 
find that I have only collected various things in the 
elementary world which bear a relation of mutual 
activity to Saturn, and if rightly combined can attract 
both the powers of that planet and of the angels with 
which it is connected " (Rydberg). Mr. Tylor thus 
ably characterizes the analogies on which such systems 
are built and the uses to which they are put. " But 
most of his pseudo-science seems to rest on even weaker 
and more arbitrary analogies, not of things but of 
names. Names of stars and constellations, of signs 
denoting regions of the sky and periods of days and 
years, no matter how arbitrarily given, are materials 
which the astrologer can work upon and bring into 
ideal connection with mundane events. That astrono- 
mers should have divided the sun's course into imagi- 



268 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

nary signs of the zodiac, was enough to originate 
astrological rules, that these celestial signs have an 
actual effect on real earthly rams, bulls, crabs, lions, 
virgins. A child born under the sign of the lion will 
be courageous, but one under the crab will not go for- 
ward in life; one born under the waterman will be 
drowned, and so forth. . . . Again, simply because 
astronomers chose to distribute among the planets the 
names of certain deities, the planets thereby acquired 
the characters of their divine namesakes. Thus it was 
that the planet Venus became connected with love, 
Mars with war, Jupiter (whose 21 in altered shape 
still heads our physicians' prescriptions) with power 
and joviality." The various positions of the heavenly 
bodies at one's birth, interpreted by such wild analo- 
gies, readily yield material for the prediction of future 
careers, vague enough to defy close denial, and bold 
enough to claim readily foreseeable consequences as 
striking verifications. Astrology represents the climax 
of the argument by analogy, fully systematized and 
calling into play many of the resources of modern 
learning. What is so clearly represented in astrology 
appears to a less extent in other pseudo-scientific sys- 
tems ; notably in palmistry and phrenology. It capti- 
vates the well-informed as well as the ignorant, it 
appeals to minds that are strong as well as those 
that are weak, and emphasizes the pricelessness of 
our scientific inheritance and the necessity of guard- 
ing it by the cultivation of sound logical habits of 
thought. 

It would be pleasant, but unwarranted, to think of 
these forms of thought as obsolete ; human nature is 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 269 

more deep-seated than learning. " In every department 
of human thought," says Mr. Clodd, " evidence of the 
non-persistence of primitive ideas is the exception rather 
than the rule. Scratch the epiderm of the civilized 
man, and the barbarian is found in the derm. In proof 
of which, there are more people who believe in Zadkiel's 
' Vox Stellarum ' than in the Nautical Almanac ; and 
rare are the households where the ' Book of Dreams ' 
and ' Fortune-Teller ' are not to be found in the kitchen. 
The Singhalese caster of nativities has many repre- 
sentatives in the West, and there may lie profit in the 
reminder of the shallow depth to which knowledge of 
the orderly sequence of things has yet penetrated in 
the many. Societies and serials for the promulgation 
of astrology exist and flourish among us ; Zadkiel 
boasts his circulation of a hundred thousand, and 
vaunts the fulfillment of his Delphic prophecies ; while 
the late Astronomer Royal, Sir George Airy, was pes- 
tered, as his successor probably is, with requests to 
work the planets, accompanied by silver wherewith to 
cross his expert palm." The old astrology finds its 
descendants in modern fatuous volumeson Heliocentric 
Astrology, or Kabalistic Astrology, abounding in absurd 
pseudo-philosophic jargon and science-aping demonstra- 
tions, but in reality only the " vulgarest travesty of the 

old." 

VIII 

By way of conclusion it may be helpful to consider 
certain general truths in the field of anthropology and 
mental evolution, upon which the illustrations we have 
been considering have a bearing. We have seen what 
a widely extended genus the analogical argument com- 



270 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

passes ; and yet, if we were to include under this head 
certain closely allied and yet distinguishable forms of 
thought, it would be much wider still. I refer par- 
ticularly to the use of metaphor and symbolism, which, 
like the children's make-believe with their dolls or 
fairies, is none the less on the boundary line between 
the real and the fictitious. Myth equally readily passes 
from the unconscious to the conscious stage, and much 
of what is plausibly interpreted as an argument by 
analogy, seems equally well an intentional use of sym- 
bolism and myth. That savages, at least in all but 
the lower stages, appreciate the use of myth is beyond 
all doubt. Primitive ceremonials, as also primitive 
explanations of the changes of nature, are full of sym- 
bolisms, which involve the same mental habit, whose 
products in the domain of analogy have been portrayed. 
This mythological instinct, Mr. Tylor well says, " be- 
longs to that great doctrine of analogy from which we 
have gained so much of our apprehension of the world 
around us. Distrusted as it now is by severer science 
for its misleading results, analogy is to us still a chief 
means of discovery and illustration, while in earlier 
grades of education its influence was all but paramount. 
Analogies which are but fancies to us were to men of 
past ages reality. They could see the flame licking its 
yet undevoured prey with tongues of fire, or the serpent 
gliding along the sword from hilt to point ; they could 
see a live creature gnawing within their bodies in the 
pangs of hunger ; they heard the voices of the hill- 
dwarfs answering in the echo, and the chariot of the 
heaven sod rattlins: in thunder over the solid firma- 
ment. Men to whom these were livino- thouo^hts had 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 271 

no need of the schoolmaster and his rules of compo- 
sition, his injunctions to use metaphor cautiously and 
to take care to make all similes consistent." 

The principle that what was once the serious occu- 
pation of men becomes in more advanced stages of 
culture the play of children, or is reduced from seri- 
ousness to mere amusement, finds illustrations in the 
mental as in the material world. The drum, once the 
serious terrifying instrument of the savage warrior, 
and the rattle, once the powerful emblem of the medi- 
cine man, have become the common toys of children. 
The bow and arrow are used for skill and sport only. 
In a similar way the formidable and trusted argument 
by analogy finds its proper field in riddles and puns. 
When we put the question, " Why is this object like 
the other?" we understand that some out-of-the-way 
and accidental resemblance is asked for, some not very 
close analogy, that provokes amusement but not belief ; 
in many cases the resemblance is in the name only and 
degenerates into a pun. In such exercises of fancy we 
are employing the same faculties that our ancestors 
used in arriving at the customs and beliefs that we 
have been considering. The laws governing the progress 
of industrial arts, of mechanical inventions and social 
institutions seem thus to find equally ready application 
to the evolution of habits and customs in the mental 
world. ' 

From another, and that also a comparative anthro- 
pological point of view, the natural history of analogy 
illustrates, though imperfectly, the evolutionary bond 
that unites the development of the race from primitive 
culture to civilization, from infantile helplessness to 



272 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

adult power, and again the dissolution of these pro- 
cesses in disease or their atavistic retention in less 
progressive strata of society. Significant, even though 
sporadic, parallelisms have been pointed out in the use 
of analogy by savages and by children ; and far more 
completely can it be shown that superstitions and 
pseudo-sciences, folk-lore traditions and popular beliefs 
show the survival of these same analogical habits of 
mind, which may be viewed in part as reversions to 
outgrown conditions of thought, in part as the crop- 
ping out, in pathological form, of retarding tendencies 
which the course of evolution may have repressed but 
not wholly destroyed. For there is hardly a form of 
modern superstition, there is hardly a custom sanc- 
tioned by the unwritten tradition of the people, but 
what can be closely duplicated among the customs and 
beliefs of the untutored savage. 

All this impresses us with the enduring qualities 
of man's barbaric past, the permanent, though latent 
effect of his complete adaptation for thousands of years 
to a low intellectual environment. " The intrusion of 
the scientific method," Mr. Clodd aptly comments, "in 
its application to man's whole nature, disturbed that 
equilibrium. But this, as yet, only within the narrow 
area of the highest culture." The earlier and more 
fundamental psychological factor of humanity is feel- 
ing and not thought, or more accurately an incipient 
rationality, thoroughly suffused with emotional mo- 
tives ; and primitive analogies proceed by a feeling of 
analogical fitness, and not by an intellectual justifica- 
tion. " The exercise of feeling has been active from 
the beginning of his history, while thought, speaking 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY 273 

comparatively, has but recently had free play. . . . 
Man wondered long chiliads before he reasoned, be- 
cause feeling travels along the line of least resistance, 
while thought, or the challenge by inquiry, with its 
assumption that there may be two sides to a question, 
must pursue a path obstructed by the dominance of 
taboo and custom, by the force of imitation, and by 
the strength of prejudice, passion, and fear." 

The survey of the argument by analogy brings home 
the conviction that there are forms of mental action, 
psychological tendencies or thought-habits, character- 
istic of undeveloped stages of human mentality ; that 
these appear in versatile and instructive variety ; and, 
more important still, that they furnish glimpses of the 
workings of a great progressive law, visible in the 
shifting of importance attached to the argument by 
analogy, and in its gradual subordination to, and ulti- 
mate retirement in favor of the sturdy principles of 
inductive logic. We are thus led to appreciate the 
means by which error is converted into truth, the slow 
and painful steps by which the logic of the sciences is 
unfolded and mastered. When Lord Chesterfield re- 
lates that the people expected a fatal issue of the 
king's illness, because the oldest lion in the tower, of 
about the same age as the king, had just died, he can- 
not help commenting upon the wildness and caprice of 
the human mind ; but Mr. Tylor more judiciously re- 
marks, " Indeed the thought was neither wild nor 
capricious ; it was simply such an argument by analogy 
as the educated world has at length painfully learned 
to be worthless, but which it is not too much to declare 
would to this day carry considerable weight to the 



274 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

minds of four-fifths of the human race." Analogy 
has doubtless lost the prestige of olden time ; but the 
remains of effete and misleading forms of thought, 
upheld by a feeling of their analogical plausibility, con- 
tinue to survive, and may at any time, when cloaked 
in a modern garb, regain their former efficiency, and 
feed the contagion of some new fad or pseudo-science ; 
while superstition, like poverty, we shall always have 
with us, so long as there are social and intellectual 
distinctions amongst men. In the light of the natural 
history survey of analogy, these phenomena appear in 
their true significance, testifying at once to the inher- 
ent progress, despite reversions, and to the underlying 
unity of constitution and purpose, through which these 
phenomena acquire their deeper and more human in- 
terest. 



THE MIND'S EYE 

Hamlet. My father, — methinks, I see my father. 
Horatio. O, where, my lord ? 
Hamlet. In my mind'3 eye, Horatio. 



It is a commonplace taught from nursery to uni- 
versity that we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, 
and feel with our fingers. This is the truth, but not 
the whole truth. Indispensable as are the sense organs 
in gaining an acquaintance with the world in which we 
live, yet they alone do not determine how extensive or 
how accurate that acquaintance shall be. There is a 
mind behind the eye and the ear and the finger-tips 
which guides them in gathering information, and gives 
value and order to the exercise of the senses. This is 
particularly true of vision, — the most intellectual of 
all the senses, the one in which mere acuteness of the 
sense organ counts least and the training in observa- 
tion counts most. The eagle's eye sees farther, but 
our eyes tell us vastly more of what is seen. 

The eye may be compared to a photographic camera, 
with its eyelid cap,^its iris shutter, its lens, and its sen- 
sitive plate, — the retina ; when properly adjusted for 
distance and light, the image is formed on the retina 
as on the glass plate, and the picture is taken. So far 
the comparison is helpful ; but while the camera takes 
a picture whenever and wherever the plate happens to 



276 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

be exposed, the complete act of seeing requires some 
cooperation on the part of the mind. The retina may 
be exposed a thousand times and take but few pic- 
tures ; or perhaps it is better to say that the pictures 
may be taken, but remain undeveloped and evanescent. 
The pictures . that are developed are stacked up, like 
the negatives in the photographer's shop, in the pigeon- 
holes of our mental storerooms, — some faded and 
blurred, some poorly arranged or mislaid, some often 
referred to and fresh prints made therefrom, and some 
quite neglected. 

In order to see, it is at once necessary that the retina 
be suitably exposed toward the object to be seen, and 
that the mind be favorably disposed to the assimilation 
of the impression. True seeing, observing, is a double 
process, partly objective or outward — the thing seen 
and the retina, — and partly subjective or inward — ■ 
the picture mysteriously transferred to the mind's rep- 
resentative, the brain, and there received and affiliated 
with other images. Illustrations of such seeing with 
the " mind's eye " are not far to seek. Wherever the 
beauties and conformations of natural scenery invite 
the eye of man, does he discover familiar forms and 
faces ; the forces of nature have rough-hewn the rocks, 
but the human eye detects and often creates the resem- 
blances. The stranger to whom such curiosities of 
form are first pointed out often finds it difficult to dis- 
cover the resemblance, but once seen, the face or form 
obtrudes itself in every view, and seems the most con- 
spicuous feature in the outlook. The flickering fire 
furnishes a fine background for the activity of the 
mind's eye, and against this it projects the forms and 



THE MIND'S EYE 277 

fancies which the leaping flames and the burning 
embers from time to time suggest. Not all see these 
fire-pictures readily, for our mental eyes differ more 
from one another than the physical ones, and perhaps 
no two persons see the same picture in quite the same 
way. It is not quite true, however, as many have held, 
that in waking hours we all have a world in common, 
but in dreams each has a world of his own ; for our 
waking worlds are made different by the differences 
in what engages our interest and our attention. It is 
true that our eyes when open are opened very largely 
to the same views, but by no one observer are all these 
views, though visible, really seen. 

This characteristic of vision often serves as a source 
of amusement. The puzzle picture with its tantalizing 
face, or animal, or what not, hidden in the trees, or 
fantastically constructed out of heterogeneous elements 
that make up the composition, is to many quite irre- 
sistible. We turn it about in all directions, wondering 
where the hidden form can be, scanning every detail 
of the picture, until suddenly a chance glimpse reveals 
it, plainly staring us in the face. When several per- 
sons are engaged in this occupation, it is amusing to 
observe how blind each is to what the others see ; their 
physical eyes see alike, but their mental eyes reflect 
their own individualities. 

Of the many thousands of persons who handle our 
silver dollar, but few happen to observe the lion's 
head which lies concealed in the representation of the 
familiar head of Liberty ; frequently even a careful 
examination fails to detect this hidden emblem of Brit- 
ish rule ; but, as before, when once found, it is quite 



278 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

obvious (Fig. 1).^ For similar reasons it is a great 
aid in looking for an object to know what to look for ; 
to be readily found, the object, though lost to sight, 
should be to memory clear. Searching is a mental 
process similar to the matching of a piece of fabric in 
texture or color, when one has forgotten the sample 
and must rely upon the remembrance of its appear- 
ance. If the recollection is clear and distinct, recogni- 
tion takes place when the judgment decides that what 
the physical eye sees corresponds to the image in the 
mind's eye ; with an indistinct mental image the recog- 
nition becomes doubtful or faulty. The novice in the 
use of the microscope experiences considerable diffi- 
culty in observing the appearance which his instructor 
sees and describes, and this because his conception of 
the object to be seen is lacking in precision. Hence 
his training in the use of the microscope is distinctly 
aided by consulting the illustrations in the text- 
book, for they enable his mental eye to realize the 
pictures which it should entertain. He may be alto- 
gether too much influenced by the pictures thus sug- 
gested to his mental vision, and draw what is really 
not under his microscope at all ; much as the young 
arithmetician will manage to obtain the answer which 
the book requires even at the cost of a resort to very 

1 In order to obtain tlie effects described in tbe various illustrations 
it is necessary in several cases to regard the figures for a considerable 
time and with close attention. The reader is requested not to give up 
in case the first attempt to secure the effect is not successful, but to 
continue the effort for a reasonable period. Individuals differ con- 
siderably in the readiness with which they obtain such effects ; in some 
cases, such devices as holding- the diagrams inverted, or at an angle, or 
viewing them with the eyes half closed, are helpful. 



THE MIND'S EYE 



279 



uninatliematical processes. For training in correct and 
accurate vision it is necessary to acquire an alert men- 
tal eye, that observes all that is objectively visible, but 
does not permit the subjective to add to or modify 
what is really present. 

II 

The importance of the mind's eye in ordinary vision is 
also well illustrated in cases in which we see or seem 
to see what is not really present, but what for one cause 




Fig. 1. — In order to see the lion's head, look at the above cut upside 
down, and the head will be discovered facing the left, as above outlined. 
It is clearer on the coin itself than in this representation. 

or another it is natural to suppose is present. A very 
familiar instance of this process is the constant over- 
looking of misprints — false letters, transposed letters, 
and missing letters — unless these happen to be par- 
ticularly striking. We see only the general physiog- 
nomy of ^ the word, and the detailed features are sup- 
plied from within ; in this case it is the expected that 
happens. In a series of experiments by Professor 



280 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

Miinsterberg a word was briefly shown, while just 
before a certain idea or train of thous^ht was suo^o:ested. 
Under these circumstances the word shown was often 
misread in accordance with the suggested idea; if the 
idea of future is suggested, part may be read as past ; 
if vegetable is the suggested line of thought, fright 
may be read as fruit, and so on. Reading is thus done 
largely by the mental eye ; and entire words, obviously 
suggested by the context, are sometimes read in, when 
they have been accidentally omitted. This is more apt 
to occur with the irregular characters used in manu- 
script than in the more distinct forms of the printed 
alphabet, and is particularly frequent in reading over 
what one has himself written. In reading proof, how- 
ever, we are eager to detect misprints, and this change 
in attitude helps to make them visible. It is very 
difficult to illustrate this process intentionally, because 
the knowledge that one's powers of observation are 
about to be tested places one on one's guard, and 
thus suppresses the natural activity of the mind's eye 
and draws unusual attention to objective details. Let 
the reader at this point hold the page at some distance 
off — say, eight or twelve feet — and draw an exact 
reproduction of the letters shown in Fig. 2. He should 
not look at Fig. 2 at close range nor read further in 
the text until this has been done ; 2ii[\di perhaps he may 
find that he has introduced strokes which were not 
present in the original. If this is not the case, let him 
try the test upon those who are ignorant of its nature, 
and he will find that most persons will supply light 
lines to complete the contours of the letters, which in 
the original are suggested but not really present ; the 



THE MIND'S EYE 



281 



original outline, Fig. 2a, becomes something like Fig. 
26, and so on for the rest of the letters. The physical 



^. 



DJ 




Fig. 2. — These letters should not be seen at all until they have been 
observed at a distance of eight to twelve feet. An interesting method of 
testing the activity of the mind's eye with these lettei's is described in the 
text. 

eye sees the former, but the mental eye sees the latter. 




Fig. 2a. 



Fig. 26. 



I tried this experiment with a class of some thirty Uni- 




Fig. 3. — For description, see text, page 282. 



versity students of Psychology, and, although they 
were disposed to be quite critical and suspected some 



282 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

kind of an illusion, only three or four drew the letters 
correctly ; all the rest filled in the imaginary light 
contours ; some even drew them as heavily as the real 
strokes. I followed this by an experiment of a similar 
character. I placed upon a table a figure (Fig. 3) 
made of light cardboard, fastened to blocks of wood 
at the base, so that the pieces would easily stand up- 
right. The middle piece, which is rectangular and 
higher than the rest, was placed a little in front of the 
rest of the figure. The students were asked to describe 
precisely what they saw ; and with one exception they 
all described, in different words, a semicircular piece of 
cardboard with a rectangular piece in front of it. In 
reality there was no half-circle of cardboard, but only 
portions of two quarter-circles with the portion back 
of the middle piece omitted. The students, of course, 
were well aware that their physical eyes could not see 
what was behind the middle cardboard, but they in- 
ferred, quite naturally, that the two side pieces were 
parts of one continuous semicircle. This they saw, so 
far as they saw it at all, with their mind's eye. 

Ill 

There is a further interesting class of illustrations 
in which a single outward impression changes its char- 
acter according as it is viewed as representing one 
thing or another. In a general way we see the same 
thing all the time, and the image on the retina does 
not change. But as we shift the attention from one 
portion of the view to another, or as we view it with a 
different mental conception of what the figure repre- 
sents, it assumes a different aspect, and to our mental 



THE MIND'S EYE 



283 



eye becomes quite a different thing. A slight but in- 
teresting change takes place if we view Fig. 4 first 
with the conception that the black is the pattern to be 
seen and the white the background, and again try to 
see the white as the pattern against a black back- 



^ 

y 
^ 

w 


i 



Fig. 4. — The black and white portions of this design are precisely alike ; 
but the effect of looking at the figure as a pattern in black upon a white 
background, or as a pattern in white upon a black background is quite 
different, although the difference is not easily described. 

ground. I give a further illustration of such a change 
in Fig. 5. In our first and natural view of this we 
focus the attention upon the black lines and observe 
the familiar illusion, that the four vertical black bands 
seem far from parallel. That they are parallel can be 
verified by measurement, or by covering up all of the 
diagram except the four main bands. But if the white 
part of the diagram be conceived as the design against 
a black background, then the design is no longer the 
same, and with this change the illusion disappears, and 



284 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

the four bands seem parallel, as they really are. It 
may require a little effort to bring about this change, 
but it is marked when once realized. 

A curious optical effect, which in part illustrates 
the change in appearance under different aspects, is 




Fig. 5. — When this figure is viewed as a black pattern on a white back- 
ground, the four main vertical black bands seem far from parallel ; when 
it is viewed as a white pattern on a black background the pattern is differ- 
ent and the illusion disappears (or neai'ly so), and the four black bands as 
well as the five white ones seem more nearly parallel. 

reproduced in Fig. 6. In this case the enchantment 
of distance is necessary to produce the transformation. 
Viewed at the usual reading distance, we see nothing 
but an irregular and meaningless assemblage of black 
and white blotches. At a distance of not less than 
fifteen to eighteen feet, however, a man's head appears 



THE MIND'S EYE 285 

quite clearly. Also observe that after the head has 
oiiee been realized it becomes possible to obtain sug- 
gestions of it at nearer distances. 

A much larger class of ambiguous diagrams consists 
of those which represent by simple outlines familiar 




Fig. 6. — This is a highly enlarged reproduction taken from a half-tone 
process print of Lord Kelvin. It appeared in the Photographic Times. 

geometrical forms or objects. We cultivate such a use 
of our eyes, as indeed of all our faculties, as will on 
the whole lead to the most profitable results. As a 
rule, the particular impression is not so important as 
what it represents. Sense-impressions are simply the 
symbols or signs of things or ideas, and the thing or 
the idea is more important than the sign. Accord- 
ingly, we are accustomed to interpret lines, whenever 



286 



FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 



we can, as tlie representations of objects. "We are 
well aware that the canvas or the etching or the photo- 
graph before us is a flat surface in two dimensions, 





\/ 




Fig. 7. — This drawing may be viewed as the 
representation of a book standing on its half- 
opened covers as seen from the back of the 
book; or as the inside view of an open book 
showing the pages. 



Fig. 8. — When this figure is viewed as an arrow, the upper or feathered 
end is apt to seem flat; when the rest of the arrow is covered, the feathered 
end may be made to project or recede like the book-cover in Fig. 7. 

but we see the picture as the representation of solid 
objects in three dimensions. This is the illusion of 
pictorial art. So strong is this tendency to view lines 
as the symbols of things, that if there is the slightest 
chance of so viewing them, we invariably do so ; for 
we have a great deal of experience with things that 
present their contours as lines, and very little with 
mere lines or surfaces. If we view outlines only, with- 
out shading or perspective or anything to definitely 
suggest what is foreground and what background, it 



THE MIND'S EYE 



287 



becomes possible for the mind to supply these details 
and see foreground as background, and vice versa, 

A good example to begin with is Fig. 7. These out- 
lines will probably suggest at first view a book, or bet- 
ter a book-cover, seen with its back toward you and 
its sides sloping away from you ; but it may also be 
viewed as a book opened out towards you and present- 
ing to you an inside view of its contents. Should the 
change not come readily, it may be facilitated by 
thinking persistently of the appearance of an open 
book in this position. The upper portion of Fig. 8 is 
practically the same as Fig. 7, and if the rest of the 
figure be covered up, it will change as did the book 
cover ; when, however, the whole figure is viewed as an 
arrow, a new conception enters, and the apparently 
solid book cover becomes thej^«^ feathered part of the 




Fig. 9. — The smaller square ma}' be regarded as either the nearer face 
of a projecting figure or as the more distant face of a hollow figure. 

arrow. Look at the next figure (Fig. 9), which repre- 
sents in outline a truncated pyramid with a square base. 



288 



FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 



Is the smaller square nearer to you, and are the sides 
of the pyramid sloping away from you toward the 
larger square in the rear ? Or are you looking into 
the hollow of a truncated pyramid with the smaller 
square in the background ? Or is it now one and now 
the other, according as you decide to see it ? Here 




Fig. 10. — This represents an or- 
ttinary table-glass, — the bottom of 
the glass and the entire rear side, 
except the upper portion, being seen 
through the transparent nearer side, 
and the rear apparently projecting 
above the front. But it fluctuates 
in appearance between this and a 
view of the glass in which the bot- 
tom is seen directly, partly from 
underneath, the lohole of the rear 
side is seen through the transparent 
front, and the front projects above 
the back. 



Fig. 11. — In this scroll the left 
half ma}^ at first seem concave and 
the right convex; it then seems to 
roll or advance like a wave, and the 
left seems convex and the right con- 
cave, as though the trough of the 
wave had become the crest, and vice 
versa. 



(Fig. 12) is a skeleton box which you may conceive as 
made of wires outlining the sides. Now the front, or 
side nearest to me, seems directed downward and to 
the left ; again, it has shifted its position and is no 
longer the front, and the side which appears to be the 
front seems directed upward and to the right. The 
presence of the diagonal line makes the change more 
striking: in one position it runs from the left-hand 



THE MIND'S EYE 



289 



rear upper corner to the right-hand /rowi lower corner ; 
while in the other it connects the left-hand /ron^ upper 
corner with the right-hand rear lower corner. 



A 


K 


7 




\ 




1 


\ 


/ 



Fig. 12. 



V k: 



Fig. 12a. 



Fig. 12&. 



Figs. 12, 12o, 126. — The two methods of viewing Fig. 12 are described 
in the text. Figs. 12a and 126 are added to make clearer the two methods 
of viewing Fig. 12. The heavier lines seem to represent the nearer sur- 
face. Fig. 12a more naturally suggests the nearer surface of the box in a 
position downAvard and to the left, and Fig. 126 makes the nearer side seem 
to be upward and to the right. But in spite of the heavier outlines of the 
one surface, it may be made to shift positions from foreground to back- 
ground, although not so readily as in Fig. 12. 

Fig. 14 will probably seem at first glimpse to be the 
view of a flight of steps which one is about to ascend 
from right to left. Imagine it, however, to be a 



290 



FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 



view of the under side of a series of steps ; the view 
representing the structure of overhanging solid mason- 
work seen from underneath. At first it may be diffi- 
cult to see it thus, because the view of steps which we 
are about to mount is a more natural and frequent 
experience than the other ; but by staring at it with 
the intention of seeing it differently the transition will 
come, and often quite unexpectedly. 

The blocks in Fig. 15 are subject to a marked fluc- 
tuation. Now the black surfaces represent the bot- 
toms of the blocks, all pointing downward and to the 



RRR 




Fig. 13. — Each member of this frieze represents a relief ornament, ap- 
plied upon the background, -which in cross-section would be an isosceles 
triangle with a large obtuse angle, or a space of similar shape hollowed 
out of the solid wood or stone. In running the eve along the pattern, it 
is interesting to observe how variously the patterns fluctuate from one of 
these aspects to the other. 

left, and now the black surfaces have changed and 
have become the tops, pointing upward and to the 
right. For some the changes come at will ; for others 
they seem to come unexpectedly, but all are aided by 
anticipating mentally the nature of the transformation. 
The effect here is quite striking, the blocks seeming 
almost animated and moving through space. In Fig. 
16 a similar arrangement serves to create an illusion as 
to the real number of blocks present. If viewed in 
one way — the black surface forming the tops of the 
blocks — there seem to be six, arranged as in Fig. 17 ; 
but when the transformation has taken place and the 
black surfaces have become the overhanging bottoms 



THE MIND'S EYE 



291 




Ftg. 14b. 

Figs. 14, lia, and 145. — The two views of Fi^. 14 described in the text 
fire broujc^ht out more clearly in Figs. 14a and 146. The shaded portion 
tends to be regarded as the nearer face. Fig. 14r/ is more apt to suggest the 
steps seen as we ascend them. Fig. 146 seems to represent the hollowed- 
oiit structure underneath the steps. But even with the shading the dual 
interpretation is possible, though less obvious. 



292 



FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 



of the boxes, there are seven, arranged as in Fig. 18. 
Somewhat different, but still belonging to the group of 
ambiguous figures, is the ingenious conceit of the duck- 
rabbit shown in Fig. 19. When it is a rabbit, the face 



i 


"W" 


1 


Lf 




FF 



Fig. 15. — This interesting figure (whicli is reproduced with modifications 
from Scripture: The New Psychology) is subject in a striking way to in- 
terchanges between foreground and background. Most persons find it 
difficult to maintain for any considerable time either aspect of the blocks 
(these aspects are described in the text) ; some can change them at will, 
others must accept the changes as they happen to come. 

looks to the right and a pair of ears are conspicuous 
behind ; when it is a duck, the face looks to the left 
and the ears have been changed into the bill. Most 
observers find it difficult to hold either interpretation 
steadily, the fluctuations being frequent, and coming 
as a surprise. 



IHE MIND'S EYE 



293 




Fig. 16. 





Fig. 16a 



Fig. 166. 



Figs. 16, IQa, and IQb. — How many blocks are there in this pile ? Six 
or seven ? Note the change in arrangenient of the blocks as they change 
in number from six to seven. This change is described in the text. Figs. 
16<7 and 166 show the two phases of a group of any three of the blocks. 
The arrangement of a pyramid of six blocks seems the more stable and is 
usually first suggested: l)ut hold the page inverted, and you will probably 
see the alternate arrangement (Avith, however, the black surfaces still 
forming the tops). And once knowing Avhat to look for, you will very 
likely be able to see either arrangement, whether the diagram be held 
inverted or not. This method of viewing the figures upside down and 
in other positions is also suggested to bring out the changes indicated in 
Figs. 12, 12a, 12b, and in Figs. 14, 14rt, lib. 



294 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

IV 

This collection of diagrams serves to illustrate the 
principle that when the objective features are ambigu- 
ous, we see one thing or another according to the 
impression that is in the mind's eye ; what the objec- 
tive factors lack in definiteness the subjective ones 

<3X$Xt> <SXb> 

Fig. 17. Fig. 18. 

T indicates that the shaded portion of Fig. 16 in this view represents 
the top of a block ; B that in the other view it represents the bottom. 

supply, while familiarity, prepossession, as well as other 
circumstances influence the result. These illustrations 
show conclusively that seeing is not wholly an objec- 
tive matter depending upon what there is to be seen, 
but is very considerably a subjective matter, depending 
upon the eye that sees. To the same observer a given 
arrangement of lines now appears as the representa- 
tion of one object and now of another ; and from the 
same objective experience, especially in instances that 
demand a somewhat complicated exercise of the senses, 
different observers derive very different impressions. 

Not only when the sense-impressions are ambiguous 
or defective, but when they are vague — when the light 
is dim or the forms obscure — does the mind's eye eke 
out the imperfections of physical vision. The vague 
conformations of drapery and make-up that are identi- 
fied and recognized in spiritualistic seances illustrate 



THE MIND'S EYE 295 

extreme instances of this process. The whitewashed 
tree or post that momentarily startles us in a dark 
country lane takes on the guise that expectancy gives 
it. The mental predisposition here becomes the domi- 
nant factor, and the timid see as ghosts what their 
more sturdy companions recognize as whitewashed posts. 
Such experiences we ascribe to the action of suggestion 
and imagination — the cloud " that 's almost in shape 
like a camel," or " like a weasel," or '' like a whale." 




Fig. 19. — Do you see a duck or a rabbit, or either ? (From Barper^s 
Weekly, originally in FUegende Blatter.) 

But throughout our visual experiences there runs this 
double strain, now mainly outward and now mainly 
inward, from the simplest excitements of the retina up 
to the realms where fancy soars free from the confines 
of sense, and the objective finds its occupation gone. 



MENTAL PEEPOSSESSION AND INEETIA 

I 

Those who are actively engaged in educational pur- 
suits are called upon from time to time to consider the 
nature of the difficulties in the imparting of knowledge, 
the psychological impediments that stand in the way 
of successful instruction. These are many and various ; 
and pertain as well to the givers as to the receivers of 
learning. This large and well threshed field I have 
no intention of gleaning once more ; I desire simply to 
draw attention to one form of difficulty on the part 
of the learner, which has been brought home to me so 
frequently and at times so forcibly, that I should be 
inclined to select it as the most salient stumbling-block 
in the successful acquisition of those branches of study 
which it falls to my lot to expound. 

This characteristic, which may be called mental pre- 
possession, is well illustrated in the following narrative, 
the truth of which, however, is not guaranteed. The 
story dates from the exciting days when the American 
public was completely fascinated by the mental gym- 
nastics of the " spelling bee ; " and relates that towards 
the close of a very fierce contest with the alphabet, 
when only a few stalwart champions remained to 
encounter the erratic eccentricities of English ortho- 
graphy, the conductor of the " bee " announced with 
an air of grave importance a word that he felt quite 



MENTAL. PREPOSSESSION AND INERTIA 297 

certain would retire not a few of the spelling virtuosi. 
He thfen asked their closest attention to his precise pro- 
nunciation, and solemnly gave utterance to what for 
all the world sounded like cat. Each hearer attempted 
to spell this extraordinarily difficult word with a suit- 
ably unusual rearrangement of the letters suggested by 
the sound, and when each effort had in turn been pro- 
nounced a failure, the information was given that the 
correct spelling was c-a-t. Haec fahula docet that 
when one expects a difficulty he is apt to find it or 
to make it. Believing the problem to be unusual, he 
applies unusual methods to its solution ; believing it to 
be complex, he overlooks the simple means by which its 
mysteries may be unlocked. It matters little how this 
reputation has come about, whether as the result of 
personal prejudice or of inherited tradition, whether 
suggested by the technicality of the subject or the 
awkwardness of the treatment, whether by the use of a 
few unusual terms or operations, or by any one of the 
countless methods, conscious and unconscious, by which 
such impressions are formed, — the result will be much 
the same. 

Many a student approaches a study such as psycho- 
logy or logic with an unshakable conviction that he is 
about to consider matters abstruse and difficult ; things 
totally unrelated to what he has studied elsewhere or 
experienced before, and accordingly requiring an exer- 
cise of the mental faculties as different as possible 
from that to which he has been accustomed. It is not 
altogether strange that such notions should be current, 
because the tradition to that effect is ancient and 
strong, and originated in times when scholars generally, 



298 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

and philosophers perhaps more than others, took pride 
in exclusive erudition, in the possession of a more or 
less esoteric wisdom quite unrelated to the knowing 
and the thinking of ol ttoXXol. It requires the com- 
bined operation of long periods of time and of persist- 
ent effort to weaken such beliefs ; and it is only within 
recent times that the notion has been successfully dis- 
seminated that the processes considered in psychology 
and logic derive their validity from our daily experi- 
ence, and require for their comprehension no mental 
gymnastics or intellectual contortions ; that in brief 
these sciences simply aim to systematize and improve, 
to interpret and explain the every-day processes by 
which knowledge is gained. This, at all events, is one 
of their functions, and one profitably emphasized in 
the introductory study of their scope and content. 

When one has once formed the impression, or has 
had it produced or suggested for him, that the study or 
the task he is about to attack is a difficult one, his 
mental powers are at once sufficiently reduced to make 
it really difficult ; the signal is given of an approach- 
ing intricate turn in the road, the brakes are turned 
on, and the train of thought creeps along slowly. 
Mental prepossession leads to mental inertia. The 
same question which the student would answer readily 
and fully when asked by a friend as an item of general 
information, becomes utterly beyond his comprehen- 
sion when it appears in the text-book, the title-page of 
which bears the ominous name of one or other of the 
studies reputed as difficult. The mind is not properly 
set ; there is little receptiveness, little alertness. When 
we are asked in a conundrum-like tone, why one thing 



MENTAL PREPOSSESSION AND INERTIA 299 

is like another, we ignore obvious and simple resem- 
blances, and look about for obscure ones. The student 
who labors under the illusion that psychology h a maze 
of conundrums, employs mental processes appropriate 
to such a pursuit. The schoolboy finds it impossible 
to answer a question in arithmetic during the geography 
lesson, and the same lack of adaptability is shown by 
his older counterpart when he greets the answer to a 
very simple question (which, however, he himself failed 
to answer) with the all too familiar, " Oh, of course I 
knew tJiat^ Perhaps the most extreme instance of 
the many that I could cite is that of a student so irre- 
sponsive and apparently at sea regarding the topic 
under discussion — the senses — as to force me to ask 
him, "With what do you hear ? " and who answered with 
perfect sincerity, " I don't know." This was a psycho- 
logical question, and as such became as difficult as the 
spelling of cat at the end of a " spelling bee." 

When the student has been made to feel that the 
questions he is asked can be answered from his every- 
day experience, and that common sense is often quite 
as serviceable a guide as special knowledge, a progress 
ensues in every way satisfactory. Such a conviction, 
hov/ever, is not a matter of verbal acknowledgment ; 
it yields slowly to explanation and proceeds somewhat 
unconsciously and inwardly. Moreover, it is a trait 
very sensitive to the power of contagion, so that a com- 
paratively small proportion of the class may success- 
fully spread this mental attitude to the whole number. 
A question which two or three have failed to answer 
becomes invested with a spurious difficulty which makes 
it a deep mystery to all the others. 



300 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

This mental prepossession may at times have quite 
different and curious results. When, for instance, the 
goal to be reached is given, v^^hen the answer may be 
looked up in the back of the book, it is surprising what 
peculiar and irrational steps will be taken to secure 
and justify the answer so given. This is all the more 
striking when the answer happens to be wrong ; how- 
ever simply such error may be discovered, the prepos- 
sessed mind will work away until by a more or less 
roundabout procedure the desired answer is reached. 
A noted professor of chemistry has an apt illustration 
of such a case. In a chemical test his assistant by mis- 
take referred the class to the wrong bottle, so that the 
substance which the correct liquid would have dissolved 
could not be at all dissolved in the liquid actually used. 
However, on the professor's next round in his labora- 
tory nearly every student assured him that the sub- 
stance had dissolved, and a few went so far as to 
describe the precise manner of its dissolution. 

It is quite clear that illustrations of mental prepos- 
session, as also of inertia, may be found in many of 
the industries and occupations of life. The bicycle has 
added a very characteristic one. At a certain stage in 
the acquisition of the art of cycling, there comes a time 
when every obstacle and irregularity in the road ab- 
sorbs the attention of the rider with a fascination that 
is quite irresistible. The rider is so possessed with the 
idea that he or she is going to run into the post or 
the curb or a rut or another vehicle, that the dreaded 
calamity may actually ensue. When the attention can 
be directed to the clear pathway, and the obstacles 
driven out from the focus of attention, the difficulty is 



MENTAL PREPOSSESSION AND INERTIA 301 

surmounted. So in jumping or running and in other 
athletic trials, the entertainment of the notion of a pos- 
sible failure to reach the mark lessens the intensity of 
one's effort, and prevents the accomplishment of one's 
best. He who hesitates is lost, because the hesitation 
makes possible the suggestion of a failure, the prepos- 
session by a sense of difficulty. 

II 

Some of the illustrations of prepossession are some- 
what trivial ; others more important, but perhaps not 
so definite as might be desired. It is seldom that an 
instance of this propensity can be pointed out in which 
an accurate and quantitative comparison may be made 
between the possessed and the unpossessed mind. One 
such illustration, which seems to me comprehensive 
and significant, is worthy of more detailed record.^ It 
is derived from the experience of the United States 
Census office in 1890, in tabulating the returns of the 
enumeration by means of machines specially devised 
for this purpose. I give an account of the manipula- 
tion of these machines in the words of one who had an 
intimate acquaintance with their use, and add italics 
to emphasize the points of special psychological signi- 
ficance. 

*' The adoption of Mr. Hollerith's tabulating machine 
for counting the population of the country according, 
at one and the same time, to sex, color, age, marital 
condition, nationality, occupation or profession, lan- 
guage and school attendance presented an entirely 
novel problem to th^ office. The machines having 

1 This account I owe to Mrs. May Cole Baker, of Washington, D. C. 



302 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

never been used for any purpose, there was no previous 
experience by which to act or on which to predicate 
results. The necessity was upon the office of employ- 
ing for a very limited time (ninety days) at least five 
hundred people for this work alone, in addition to the 
one thousand who could be taken from other branches 
of the work and placed on this one. Every one, includ- 
ing Mr. Hollerith himself, felt that the rapid and ac- 
curate use of the punching machines called for a degree 
of cultivated intelligence not possessed by every clerk. 
So much for the mental attitude. 

" The clerks (an instructor for every twenty) were 
taught to edit the family schedules from which the 
count was to be made, thus learning thoroughly how 
to read and classify the returns. In order to accom- 
modate the returns to the capacity of a punching 
machine, a great variety of symbols were adopted for 
occupations and professions : thus Ad was used for 
farmer : Ac for farm hands : Kd for merchants : Gd 
for agents, etc., through twenty-four two-columned 
octavo pages of ordinary type. Some one symbol must 
be used for each occupation recorded, and the use of 
the symbols must be learned, and, for rapid work, they 
must be committed to memory. ^ After five weeks of 
editing, one by one, the most reliable and intelligent 
workers were set to use the punching machines. The 
task is much like that of using a typewriter, substitut- 
ing for keys a movable punch which passes through 

1 It should be noted that it is only the classification of occupations 
that requires so extremely elaborate and artificial a system ; the re- 
turns for nationality, age, sex, marital condition, etc., are far simpler to 
record. The editing- consists in writing the symbols on the returns, so 
that they need not be memorized. 



MENTAL PREPOSSESSION AND INERTIA 303 

lettered holes, and in place of the forty keys of an 
ordinary typewriter, about two hundred and fifty holes 
are to be learned. 

" Mr. Hollerith set the number of cards for a day's 
work at 550. (Each finished card contained, on the 
average, 10 holes.) It was two weehs before that 
number of cards was reached by any cleric^ and that 
only in exceptional cases. Then the entire force of 
the division was set to work. In two weeks most of 
them had reached five hundred, and the average was 
daily increasing. These clerks worked at first from 
edited schedules; that is, those on which had been 
written the symbols to be punched on the machine. 
A roll of honor was made out daily showing the high- 
est records, and in a loeeh the clerks were doing from 
six hundred to fifteen hundred a day^ but at a great 
cost of nervous force. So severe was the nervous 
strain that complaints were made to the Secretary of 
the Interior, who forbade any further posting of daily 
reports, and instead an order was posted that no clerk 
was required to do more than such a day's work as he 
or she could readily perform, and that no arbitrary 
number was required of any one. 

" After the work was well under way about two 
hundred new clerics were put into one room and scat- 
tered through the force already at work. They had 
no experience with schedides^ knew nothing of the 
symbols, had never seen the machines. They sazo 
those around them working easily and ra2ndly, and in 

THREE DAYS SEVERAL OF THEM HAD DONE FIVE HUN- 
DRED, IN A WEEK NEARLY EVERY ONE, while the gen- 
eral average was rising. There was no longer any 



304 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

question of nervous strain, and one of these temporary- 
clerks the day before she left beat the record by doing 
2,230. I think the influence of the mental attitude 
quite as remarkable in the matter of their doing the 
work easily as in that of doing it rapidly. During 
the first month many were actually sick from overwork 
when doing seven hundred, while after that time the 
idea that the work was unusually trying was never 
referred to. Another significant fact is that after the 
posting of the daily record was abolished there was no 
falling off in the daily average, as had been anticipated, 
while complaints of overwork necessarily ceased." 

It is thus demonstrated that an unskilled clerk, with 
an environment proving the possibility of a task and 
suggesting its easy accomplishment, can in three days 
succeed in doing what a skilled clerk, with a prelimi- 
nary acquaintance of five weeks with the symbols to 
be used, could do only after two weehs' practice ; and 
this because the latter, doubtless not a whit inferior in 
ability, had been led to regard his task as difficult. 

Ill 

If we consider the psychological relations of the 
processes involved in the above illustrations, we are led 
to the conviction that we seldom exert our powers to 
their full capacity. Instances in which, under the influ- 
ence of some stirring, perhaps dangerous circumstance, 
persons exert physical energies ordinarily beyond their 
resources, are quite familiar; and the same is true 
though less readily demonstrated of mental effort. 
The success of the various methods of " mind cure," in 
which the conviction of the possibility of a cure so 



MENTAL PREPOSSESSION AND INERTIA 305 

markedly aids its realization, adds another class of 
illustrations ; and among the experiments with hyp- 
notized persons occur countless instances of the per- 
formance of actions, both physical and mental, quite 
surpassing what is regarded as normal. The powers 
which are here called upon through somewhat extreme 
and drastic means, can doubtless be drawn upon to a 
less extent by the use of more moderate agencies ; and 
this at once suo^oests the educational utilization of the 
mental attitude in question. Perhaps the ideal aim is 
to impress the student indirectly rather than directly, 
by manner rather than by instruction, with the convic- 
tion that what is required of him is well within his 
powers ; and to do this without in the least impugning 
the necessity of honest, hard work for the accomplish- 
ment of serious results. The complaint is often made 
that the American boy takes longer by several years 
to reach a given grade of scholarship than his foreign 
brother; and the reason of this difference is usually 
assigned to the extremely slow progress made in the 
elementary public schools. The machinery is started 
at too slow a rate, and seems to leave the impress of its 
inertia upon all succeeding periods. 

It is not possible to devise any readily formulated 
and easily applied cure for this mental prepossession ; 
our aim must be to sterilize the mental atmosphere, so 
that the germs of the disease may not gain a foothold ; 
to set a healthy normal step and take it for granted 
that it can be followed by all but the laggards. But 
in spite of all effort, the failing is quite certain to crop 
out, and will always continue to demand for its treat- 
ment much educational tact and insight. 



306 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

When we come to a a slippery place in the road, we 
involuntarily take short steps and become extremely 
conscious of our locomotion. It is important to pre- 
vent the growth of the habit of imagining slippery 
places in the paths about to be trodden ; and even 
when they are actually to be encountered, it is well to 
meet them with, the bracing effort that comes from the 
use of a reserve energy, to proceed without too much 
consciousness of the path, and with as nearly a normal 
gait as possible. There are sufficient difficulties in the 
various walks of life without adding to them those that 
arise from mental prepossession, and that lead to men- 
tal inertia. 



A STUDY OF INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS 



Quite a number of delusions find a common point 
of origin in the natural tendency to view our men- 
tal life — the aggregate of our thoughts and doings 

— as coextensive with the experiences of which our 
consciousness gives information and which our will 
directs. The significance of the unconscious and the 
involuntary is apt to be underestimated or disregarded. 
We are more ready to acknowledge that in certain un- 
usual and semi-morbid conditions persons will exhibit 
these peculiar expressions of the subterranean strata 
of our mental structure — that some have the habit of 
walking or talking in their sleep, that others occasion- 
ally fall into an automatic, trance-like condition, that 
hypnotism and hysteria and obscure lapses of conscious- 
ness and alterations of personality bring to the surface 
curious specimens of the mysteries of this underworld, 

— but we are slow to appreciate that the sub-conscious 
and the involuntary find a common and a natural place 
amidst the soundly reasoned and aptly directed activi- 
ties of our own intelligence. While it is reasonable 
and proper to have faith in the testimony of conscious- 
ness, it is desirable that this confidence should be ac- 
companied by an understanding of the conditions under 
which such testimony is presumably valid, and when 



308 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

presumably defective or misleading. Sense-deceptions, 
faulty observation, distraction, exaggeration, illusion, 
fallacy, and error are not idle abstract fancies of the 
psychologist, but stern realities; and their e.dstence 
emphasizes the need in the determination cf truth 
and the maintenance of a sound rationality, of a calm, 
unprejudiced judgment, of an experienced and balanced 
intelligence, of a discerning sense for nice distinctions, 
of an appreciation of the circumstances under which 
it is peculiarly human to err. A demonstration of the 
readiness with which perfectly normal individuals may 
be induced to yield visible evidence of unconscious and 
involuntary processes, thus possesses a special interest ; 
for when the naturalness of a few definite types of in- 
voluntary movements is made clear, the application of 
the experience to more complex and more indefinite 
circumstances will easily and logically follow. While 
the circumstances under which involuntary indications 
of mental activity are ordinarily given, are too vari- 
ous to enable one to say ah uno disce omnes, yet the 
principle demonstrated in one case is capable of a con- 
siderable generalization, which will go far to prevent 
misconception of apparently mysterious and exceptional 
phenomena. 

II 

When some years ago, the American public was con- 
fronted with the striking exhibitions of muscle-reading, 
the wildest speculations were indulged in regarding its 
true modus operandi ; and the suggestion that all that 
was done was explicable by the skillful interpretation 
of the unconscious indications given by the subjects, 



A STUDY OF INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS 309 

was scouted or even ridiculed. It was not supposed 
that such indications were sufficiently definite for the 
purposes of the " mind-reader," or were obtainable 
under the conditions of his tests. Again, it was urged 
that this explanation was hardly applicable to certain 
striking performances, which in reality involved other 
and subtler modes of thought-interpretation, and the 
accounts of which were also exaggerated and distorted. 
And furthermore, it was argued, too many worthy and 
learned persons were absolutely certain that they had 
given no indications whatever. For a time the view 
that mind-reading was muscle-reading rested upon 
rather indirect evidence, and upon a form of argument 
that carries more weight with those familiar with the 
nature of scientific problems than with the public at 
large, ^ut the development of experimental research in 
the domain of psychology has made possible a variety 
of demonstrations of the truth and adequacy of this 
explanation. It was with the purpose of securing a 
visible record of certain types of involuntary move- 
ments, that the investigation, the results of which are 
here presented, was undertaken. 

Inasmuch as the movements in question are often 
very slight, somewhat delicate apparatus is required 
to secure their record ; the apparatus must in a mea- 
sure exaggerate the tendency to motion though without 
altering its nature. The form of apparatus which I 
devised for this study, and which may be appropriately 
called an automatograph, is illustrated in the accompa- 
nying figure (p. 310). It consists of a wooden frame, 
enclosing a heavy piece of plate glass (fifteen inches 
square), and mounted upon three legs which are pro- 



310 



FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 



vided with screw adjustments for bringing the plate 
into a perfect leveL Upon the plate of glass are 
placed in the form of a triangle three well turned and 
polished steel or brass balls ; and upon the balls rests 
a thin crystal-plate glass set in a light wooden frame. 
The finger-tips of one hand rest upon the upper plate 
in the position indicated. When all is properly ad- 




FiG. 1. — The automatograph. When in use a screen 
(not shown in the illustration) cuts off the view of the appara- 
tus from the subject. The recording device, which may also 
be used separately, is shown in outline in half its full size. 
R is a glass rod which moves freely up and down in the 
glass tube T, which is set into the cork C. A rubber band B 
is provided to prevent the rod from falling through the tube, 
when not resting upon the recording-plate. 

justed and glass and balls are rubbed smooth 
with oil, it is quite impossible to hold the 
apparatus perfectly still for more than a few 
V seconds ; the slightest unsteadiness or move- 
ment of the hand at once sets the plate roll- 
ing with an irregular motion. If one closes the eyes 
and fixes the attention upon a definite mental image or 
train of thought, it is easy to form the conviction that 
the plate remains quiet, but the record proves that this 



A STUDY OF INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS 311 

is not the case. The other parts of the apparatus are 
designed to give a record of the movements of the 
plate. Fastened to the light frame containing the 
upper glass plate is a slender rod some ten inches 
long, bearing at its end a cork ; and piercing the cork 
is a small glass tube within which a snugly fitting glass 
rod has room to move. The rod is drawn to a smooth, 
round point ; and when in position rests upon a piece 
of glazed paper that has been blackened over a flame 
and then smoothly stretched over a small glass plate. 
The point of the rod thus records easily and accurately 
every movement of the hand that is imparted to the 
upper plate, and by the manner of its adjustment 
accommodates itself to all irregularities of movement 
or recording surface. This recording device is shown 
in greater detail in the illustration, and was used to 
good advantage as a simple automatograph in inde- 
pendence of the balls and plates. In that case the 
recording part is held in the hand as though it were 
a pencil, but in a vertical position, and the record-plate 
may be placed upon a table ; or for special purposes 
the plate may be held in the other hand or fastened to 
the top of one's head. When not otherwise stated, the 
records here reproduced were obtained by use of the 
automatograph. Some of the records are noted as 
having been secured with the simpler device just de- 
scribed. 

The process of securing a record is as follows : the 
subject, standing, places his hand upon the automato- 
graph, with the arm nearly horizontal and not quite 
fully extended, and the elbow bent in a fairly comfort- 
able posture ; his attention is engaged by asking him 



312 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

to listen to and count the strokes of a metronome ; to 
look at and count the oscillations of a pendulum ; to 
read from a book; to call out the names of colors; 
to think of a given direction or locality, or the position 
of an object ; and so on. He is instructed to think as 
little as possible of his hand, making a reasonable 
effort to keep it from moving. To cut o^ the appara- 
tus from the subject's field of vision and attention, a 
large screen is interposed between him and the record, 
a curtain with a suitable opening for the arm forming 
part of the screen. The operator holds the glass pen- 
cil in his hand, and when all is in readiness allows it 
to slip through the glass tube and begin to write, re- 
moving it again after a definite interval or when the 
record seems completed. 

Ill 

We may now consider a few typical results. Fig. 2, 
an ordinary average result, was obtained while the sub- 




FiG. 2. — Reading colors. Time of record, 95 seconds. Position 
of colors »>■ > . Subject facing »> >■ > . In all the figures A repre- 
sents the beginning of the record, and Z the end. The arrows are used 
to indicate the direction in which the object attended to was situated, and 
also the direction in which the subject was facing. The tracings are per- 
manently fixed by coating them with a weak solution of shellac in alcohol. 

ject was calling out the names of a series of small 
patches of color, displayed on the wall facing him, about 
eight feet distant. It will be observed that the move- 



A STUDY OF INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS 313 

ment (which in all the illustrations has its beginning 
marked by an A and its end by a Z) proceeds irregu- 
larly but decidedly towards the object upon which the 
attention was fixed. As a rule the subject is unaware 
of the movement which his hand has made, and exercises 
no essential control over the results ; indeed it is likely 
that he is considerably surprised when the results are 
first shown to him. At times he becomes conscious of 
the loss of equilibrium of the apparatus, but the indi- 
cation is rarely sufficiently definite to inform him of 
the direction of the movement. Not infrequently, the 
movement is performed with complete unconsciousness, 
and is accompanied by a strong conviction that the 
apparatus has been stationary. In several cases an 
intentional simulation of the movements was produced 
for comparison with the involuntary records ; the 
result was quite generally a very different and coarser 
type of movement, readily distinguishable from the 
involuntary writings. A prominent characteristic of 
practically all of the movements is their irregular and 
jerky character ; the h^ind for a time oscillates about 
uncertainly, and then moves rather suddenly and 
quickly in a given direction ; then another period of 
hesitation, again a more or less sharp advance, and so 
on. It is probable that it is these repeated brief 
movements of more vigorous indication of the direction 
of the subject's attention, that the muscle-reader waits 
for and utilizes 

It is obvious enough that the results of a test of this 
kind cannot be anticipated, not alone because there 
are marked differences between individuals in the 
readiness with which they will manifest involuntary 



314 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

movements, but also because the intensity of the atten- 
tion and the momentary condition of the subject are 
important and variable factors in the result. With 
very good subjects it becomes quite safe to predict the 
general nature of the tracing ; and the different tra- 
cings of the same subject often bear a family resem- 
blance. We must now learn what we can of the 
various factors which influence these sub-conscious 
handwritings. That indefinitely complex combination 
of natural and nurtural circumstances, to which we 
give the name of character, or individuality, or person- 
ality, doubtless presents the most striking factor in 
this, as it does in normal handwriting ; and in both 
cases analyses are inevitably vague and confined to 
prominent points of difference. Extreme types are 
always interesting and at times instructive. The tra- 
cing of Fig. 3 was obtained under the same circum- 
stances as Fig. 2, but with a subject whose tendency 
towards involuntary movements is far more marked, is 
indeed unusual. The total extent of the movement is 
more than three times as great as in the former case, 
and it twice changes its direction. This latter charac-* 
teristic is the noteworthy one, for it is due to the fact 
that the colors which the subject was reading were 
arranged in three rows ; the first row was read from 
left to right (corresponding to a downward direction in 
the figure) ; the second row was read in the reversed 
direction ; and the third row in the original direction 
again. The completeness of correspondence between 
the movements of the hand and of the attention leaves 
nothing to be desired. This subject yielded the most 
extensive and predictable involuntary movements of 



A STUDY OF INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS 315 

any whom I tested. A satisfactory impression of the 
variety and range of the individual differences which 




Fig. 3. — Reading colors arranged in three rows. Time of 



record 90 seconds. 
in the direction a 
second to the I 
movement of 1 
attention, ^ 



The first line was read in the direction 
; and the third again ^^ , At the turn 
third line the record y is interrupted, 
the hand parallel with I the move- 




316 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

subjects, chosen somewhat at random, are likely to 
present, may be gathered from the series of records 
which will be reproduced as illustrative also of other 
influences. In Fig. 4 is represented another average 
record quite similar to that of Fig. 2 but produced by 
another subject, while reading from a printed page for 
three-quarters of a minute ; as before the hand moves 
towards the focus of attention. It would be easy to 
present both more decided and extensive, and more 
uncertain involuntary records of still other subjects ; 
while negative or quite indeterminate tracings are by 
no means uncommon. 

When, to vary the nature of the impression to which 
the attention is directed, a metronome is used, and to 




Fig. 4. — Reading from printed page. Time of record, 45 seconds. 
Direction of the attention ; ^> ' > . Subject facing >» ,> . 

insure attention on the part of the subject he is re- 
quired to count the strokes, it may be that another 
form of involuntary movement appears. The tend- 
ency to beat time to enlivening music by tapping with 
the hands, or stamping with the feet, or nodding with 
the head, is most familar ; and Dr. Lombard has shown 
that music is capable of effecting such thoroughly in- 
voluntary movements as the sudden rise of the leg that 
follows reflexly upon a blow on the patella of the knee. 
It is not surprising, therefore, to find evidences of peri- 
odic movements in these automatograms ; and in some 



A STUDY OF INVOLUNTARY MOVEISIENTS 317 

instances, such as Fig. 5, this pervades the whole 
record. Here the hand moves to and fro, keeping 
time — not accurately at all, but in a general way — 
with the strokes of the metronome. 




Fig. 5.— Counting the strokes of a metronome. Shows the 
oscillations of the movements with the strokes of the metronome. 

To obtain similar results for a visual impression 
a silently swinging pendulum is used, the subject 
following the oscillations with his eyes and counting 
them. The result is more frequently simply a move- 




FiG. 6. — Counting the oscillations of a pendulum. Time 
of record, 45 seconds. Direction of the attention > » > . Subject 
facing y^ y ' > . The points 1, 2, 3, show the positions of the writing- 
point, 15, 30, and 45 seconds after the record was started. 

ment towards the pendulum, Fig. 6 ; but occasionally 
there appear periodic movements induced by those of 
the pendulum. A very excellent instance of the latter 
appears in Fig. 7 (p. 318). 



318 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

We may more closely approximate tlie ordinary 
experiment of the muscle-reader by giving the subject 
some object to hide, say a knife, and then asking him 




Fig. 7. —Counting pendulum oscillations. Time of record, 80 
seconds. Shows movement at first toward the pendulum, and then 
synchronous with its oscillations. 

to place his hand upon the automatograph, and to 
think intently of the place of concealment. As before 
there is a movement of the hand ; and on the basis of 




Fig. 8. — Thinking of a hidden object. Time of record, 30 
seconds. Direction of the attention 



the general direction of this movement one may ven- 
ture a prediction of the direction in which the knife 
lies. The results will show all grades of success, from 



A STUDY OF INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS 319 

complete failure to an accurate localizing of the object ; 
but as good a record as Fig. 8 is not infrequent. As 
indicated by the letters and the arrow, the hand moved 




PtG. 9. — Reading FROM jk »> .> A printed page. The page 
W'as moved about the sub- \ ^ . I j^ct in the direction of the 




irregularly toward the hidden knife. In this case the 
eyes are closed, and the concentration of the attention 
is maintained by a mental effort without the aid of the 




Fig. 10. — Counting pendulum oscillations. Time of record, 
120 seconds. Direction.of the attention > » > . Subject facing »> > ^ 
Illustrates slow and indirect movement. The points, 1, 2, 3, 4, indi_ 
cate the position of the writing- point, 30, 60, 90, and 120 seconds after 
the record was started. 

senses. The peculiar line of Fig. 9 was obtained in an 
experiment in which a book was slowly carried about 
the room, the subject being required to read continu- 



320 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

ously from the page. It is evident that the hand fol- 
lowed the movement of the attention, not in a circle 
but in an irregular outline closing in upon itself ; the 




Fig. 11. — Counting the strokes of a metronome. Time of 
record, 70 seconds. The points, 1, 2, 3, 4, indicate the positions of the 
"Writing point at 15, 30, 45, and 60 seconds after the record was begun. 
Direction of the attention > » > » Subject facing > » > . Illustrates 
slight hesitation at first and then a rapid movement toward the object of 
attention. 

change in posture which this process involved has an 
undoubted influence upon the result. 

Before passing to a more specific interpretation of 
the data, it may be interesting to illustrate more fully 
the scope of individual variations ; for the great dif- 




FiG. 12. — Counting the strokes of a metronome. Time of 
record, 90 seconds. Direction of attention ) ^> > . Subject facing 
^>" > Illustrates initial directness of movement followed by hesitancy. 

fe fence in availability of subjects to the muscle-reader 
is equally prominent in tests with the automatograph. 
Some movements are direct and extensive, others are 
circuitous and brief. Fig. 10 is a good type of a small 
movement, but of one quite constantly toward the 



A STUDY OF INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS 321 

object of the attention. This may be contrasted with 
an extreme record, not here reproduced, in which there 
is a movement of six and a half inches in forty-five 
seconds ; or with a fairly extensive movement as in Fig, 
11. In some cases the first impulse carries the hand 
toward the object of thought, and is followed by con- 
siderable hesitation and uncertainty ; a marked exam- 
ple of this tendency may be seen in Fig. 12. There 




Fig. 13. — Thinking op a locality. Time record 120 seconds. 

Direction of the attention > » > . Subject facing »> > . Illustrates 

initial hesitancy followed by a steady movement toward the object 
thought of. 

is, too, an opposite type, in which the initial move- 
ments are variable, and the significant movement toward 
the object of thought comes later, when perhaps there 
is some fatigue. This tendency appears somewhat in 
Figs. 11 and 13. 

IV 

What is the origin of the movements involved in 
these records ? To what extent are they movements of 
the hand, of the arm, or of the entire body? Casual 
observation is sufficient to show that with a o^iven 
position of the arm, certain movements are much more 
readily made than others ; and the involuntary tenden- 



322 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

cies will naturally follow the lines of least resistance. 
If, for instance, you hold your arm nearly on a level 
with the shoulders and in line with them, you per- 
ceive at once that movements of the hand to the front 
are much more readily made than to the rear, and 
movements toward the body more readily than those 
away from the body ; the tendency of the hand is to 
move forward in a circle of which the shoulder is the 
centre. What we require is a position in which move- 
ments in any one direction are as readily made as in 
any other; and this may be approximated, though 
only approximated, by holding the hand at an angle of 
about 45° with the line joining the shoulders, and with 
the elbow bent at an angle of about 120°. This was the 
position in most of the tests, and the usual result was 
a movement toward the object of attention ; but when 
the object attended to lies in back of the subject, this 
tendency is sometimes outweighed by the natural tend- 
ency for the arm to move forward, and the result may 
be a movement forward, but a less direct movement 
forward than when the object of attention is to the 
front. In a good subject, however, the involuntary 
tendency is strong enough to prevail, and a movement 
backward results. An instance of this, obtained under 
other but comparable circumstances, appears in Fig. 
14. It is to be noted that in this figure the tracing 
marked I. was obtained with the subject seated, and 
the metronome beating behind him ; the hand after 
some hesitation moves backward slowly towards the 
metronome to a moderate extent. In tracing II., with 
the subject also seated, the metronome is to the front, 
and the hand moves directly and quickly towards it. 



A STUDY OF INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS 323 

We conclude that the position of the body is an im- 
portant factor in the resultant movements, but that it 
does not interfere with their accepted psychological 
interpretation. 

When observing the subject during a test, we may- 
note the movements of the body as a whole, and of 
the arm or hand. The movement of the body is an 
irregular swaying with the feet as the centre of the 
movement ; this 
swaying is most 
readily recorded by 
fixing the recording- 
plate upon the sub- 
ject's head, and hav- 




FiG. 14. — Counting the strokes of a metronome. Subject 
seated. In tracing I. the metronome is at the rear. Time of record, 

105 seconds. Direction of the attention < << <. Subject facing 5^ ^. 

In tracing IT. the metronome was to the front. Time of record 45 seconds. 
Direction of the attention ^ > > . Subject facing »> > . 

ing the recording-rod held in a suitable position above 
it. It was found that in connection with the swaying 
movements there were general movements towards the 
object of attention ; and such movements were as 
readily made when the object was to the front, to the 
rear, or to either side. To determine how far this 
movement is the same in head and hand, it is neces- 
sary to record both simultaneously. Fig. 15 illustrates 
the correspondence of the two movements. It thus 



324 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

becomes clear that the swaying of the body as a whole 
constitutes an important factor of these automatograph 
records ; that the movements of the head (being farther 




Fig. 15. — Counting the stkokes of a metronome. Time of 
record, 45 seconds. The upper tracing shows the movements of the head 
recorded upon a plate resting on the head. The lower tracing shows the 
usual record of the hand upon the automatograph. Direction of the 
attention > » > , Subject facing 



away from the centre of motion) are more extensive 
than those of the hand ; and that both head and hand 
are sensitive organs for the expression of involuntary 
movements. That the muscle-reader is aware of this 
fact is obvious from the usual positions which he main- 
tains towards his subject in reading the direction of the 
hidden object. 

To eliminate the record of the swaying of the body, 
we may experiment with the subject seated ; we obtain 
a distinctive record in which certain phases of the 
fluctuations have almost disappeared, and in which the 
record approximates to a straight line (tracing II. of 



A STUDY OF INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS 325 

Fig. 14). One may also eliminate the record of the 
swaying- by dispensing with the automatograph, and 
simply holding the recording plate in one hand and the 
recording device or pencil in the other ; for then the 
plate and pencil sway together, and naturally no record 
of it is made. The relatively fine movements thus ob- 
tained are shown in Fig. 16 ; the contrast between this 
record and such records as Figs. 4, 5, 6, is mainly the 
contrast between a record in which the general sway- 
ing of the body is registered, and one from which it has 
been eliminated. It is interesting to note that in rec- 
ords thus taken, there is but a slight difference in the 
result when the subject is standing and when he is 
sitting ; which is a further proof that the swaying of 
the body has been eliminated. (Compare these with 




Fig. 16. — Counting the strokes of a metronome. Right hand 
holds the pencil, and left hand holds the record plate. Direction of 
metronome X>> . >. Subject facing > » > . In the upper tracing the 
subject was standing; time of record, 90 seconds. In the lower tracing 
the subject was sitting; time of record, 90 seconds. 

Fig. 14.) Traces of periodic oscillations are notice- 
able in Fig. 16 ; these are due to movements of respira- 
tion, and in tracing II. of Fig. 17, they are unusually 



326 



FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 



distinct and regular, about twenty to the minute. In 
this case the forearm of the hand holding the record- 
plate was braced against the body, while the recording 




Fig. 17. — Thinking of a 
BUILDING. Right hand holds pen- 
cil, and left hand holds record plate. 
Subject facing /N . In tracing I., 
direction of I the attention ^; 
in tracing II., <^ direction of 
the attention * . Time of each 
record, 60 sec- T onds. II. 



Fig. 18. — Counting the strokes 
OF A METRONOME. Right hand 
holds pencil, left hand holds record 
plate. Direction of the attention 
from A to Bm, fromB to C.»>«i. >, 
from C to DV,T fromD to E 
Time of y J^each portion, 45 sec- 
onds. 



shows respira- I tion records. 



hand was held free from it ; and thus the abdominal 
movements were registered. The movements toward 
the object of attention appear throughout. Fig. 17 
shows a movement towards the rear of the subject, as 
well as towards the front ; which again shows that 
under suitable conditions, involuntary movements may 
be recorded in one direction as readily as in another. 
Fig. 18 presents a most beautifully regular movement 
in all four directions. As the metronome, the strokes 
of which the subject was counting, was carried from 
one corner of the room to another and so on around 



A STUDY OF INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS 327 

the room, the hand involuntarily followed it and re- 
corded an almost perfect square. So striking and 
regular and so varied an involuntary movement, in 
conformity with changes in the direction of attention, 
one can expect to secure but seldom, and then only 
with a good subject. 

The outline presented in Fig. 19 was obtained in a 
test in which the movements of the hands were sepa- 
rately recorded, in order to determine the degree of 
correspondence between them. The result shows a 
marked general resemblance, indicating in part a com- 




FiG. 19. — THiNKUfG OF A BUILDING. Both hands hold record 
plates, the pencils being held fixed above them- Time of record 35 sec- 
onds. Direction of the attention jg . Subject facing jjj . I., left hand; 
II., right hand. 



r " 1 



mon origin of the two movements. The next figure, 
Fig. 20, shows that this correspondence is dependent 
in part upon the similarity of the positions of the two 



328 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

hands. Tlie hand that is held away from the body 
moves more extensively ; but the form of the move- 
ments remain similar. The records reproduced in 
Figs. 14-22 and 26 were obtained upon the same sub- 
ject, though with slightly varying conditions, and are 
fairly comparable with one another, and thus illustrate 
the analysis of the resultant movements into their com- 
ponent factors. 




Fig. 20. — Thinking of a building. Each hand holds record 
plate. Time of record, 35 seconds. Direction of the attention ^. Sub- 
ject facing ^. I., left hand held extended far out. IL, right T hand 
held close j to body. V 



nng«. I. 
lose [ to b 



Involuntary movements are not limited to the hori- 
zontal plane ; vertical movements may be recorded by 
holding the recording device in a slanting position, 
and fixing the record plate upon the wall. The main 
characteristic of such a record is the sinking of the 
arm through fatigue ; the movement is rapid and 



A STUDY OF INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS 329 

coarse (tracing I. of Fig. 20). If the attention be 
directed to the front, we obtain a resultant of the ten- 




FiG. 21. — Thinking of one's feet. Record plate vertical. Time 
of record, 45 seconds. Direction of the attention V. 11., thinking of 
point overhead. Time of record, A 45 seconds. Y Kecording plate 
vertical. Direction of the attention 1. 



330 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

dency to move towards the object of attention, and of 
the sinking of the arm, as appears in the diagonal line 
of Fig. 22. Fig. 21 illustrates an interesting point 
similar to that illustrated in Fig. 14. When the atten- 
tion is directed downward, the hand 
falls rapidly (tracing I.) ; but 
when the attention is di- 
rected upward, very lit- 
tle movement at all 
takes place, 




Fig. 22. — Counting the 

strokes of a 2mf.teon05ie. 
Record pjate vertical. Pencil held 
in extended right hand. Time of 
record, 20 seconds. Direction of the at- 
tention < « «C. Subject facing ^ «^^, 

— the tendency to move towards the 
object of attention constantly counter- 
acting the tendency for the arm to fall (tracing II.). 



While I have not been altogether successful in de- 
termining by this method the relative efficiency of dif- 
ferent sense-impressions in holding the attention, the 
successful results are especially interesting. In Fig. 
23 the tracing marked I. shows the movement of the 
hand during the thirty-five seconds that the subject 
was counting the strokes of a metronome ; tracing 
XL shows the movement while counting for twenty- 
five seconds the oscillations of a pendulum. The latter 



A STUDY OF INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS 331 

movement is in this case much more extensive than 
the former, thus indicating that the visual impression 
held the attention much better than the auditory. The 




Fig. 23. — I. Counting the strokes of a metronome. Auto- 
matograph record. Time of record, 35 seconds. Direction of the atten- 
tion >^i>—^. Subject facing ^>- j> > . II. Counting pendulum oscil- 
lations. Automatograph record. Time of record, 25 seconds. Direc- 
tion of the attention ^?5r- — t^. Subject facing ;> » > . 

subject of this record is a well-know^n writer and 
novelist; and his description of his own mental pro- 
cesses entirely accords with this result ; he is a good 




Fig. 24. — From A to A', reading colors; from A' on, counting 
PENDULUM oscillations. Automatograph record. Time of record, 
from A to A', 35 seconds: from A' on, 25 seconds. Direction of the 
attention g » > » Subject facing > » > . 

visualizer, and visual impressions and memory-images 
dominate his mental habits. 

We may next turn to Fig. 24. The subject was 
asked to call the names of a series of small patches of 



332 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

color hanging upon the wall in front of him. He did 
this with some uncertainty for thirty-five seconds, and 
during this time his hand on the automatograph moved 
from A to A'. At the latter point he was asked to 
count the oscillations of a pendulum ; this entirely 
changed the movement, the hand at once moving 
rapidly toward the pendulum. The pendulum was a 




Fig. 25. — Counting pendulum oscillations. Time of record, 35 
seconds. The record from B to C is continuous with that of A to B. 
Direction of the attention > » > . Subject facing > » > . The sub- 
ject, a child of eleven years. Record reduced to | of original size. 

more attractive sense-impression than the colors. The 
special point of interest in this record is, that upon 
examination the subject's color-vision proved to be de- 
fective, and thus accounted for the failure of the colors 
to hold his attention. 

An important problem relates to the possible corre- 
lation of types of involuntary movements with age, 
sex, temperament, disease, and the like. A few obser- 
vations upon children are interesting in this respect. 
They reveal the limited control that children have 
over their muscles, and their difficulty to fix the atten- 
tion when and where desired. Their involuntary move- 



A STUDY OF INVOLUXTARY MOVEMENTS. 333 

ments are large, with great fluctuations, and irregulai-ly 
towards the object of attention. Fig. 25 illustrates 
some of these points ; in thirty-five seconds the child's 
hand moved by large steps seven inches toward the 
pendulum, and the entire appearance of the outline is 
different from those obtained upon adults. 

Much attention has recently been paid to automatic 
writing, or the unconscious indication of the nature^ 
not merely the direction of one's thoughts, while the 
attention is elsewhere engaged. I attempted this upon 
the automatograph by asking the subject to view or 
think of some letter or geometric figure, and then 
searching the record for some trace of the letter or 
figure : but always with a negative result. While un- 
successful in this sense, the records prove of value in 




Fig. 26. — Thinking of letter O. Pencil held in hand; record on 
table. I., subject standing; II., subject seated. 

furnishing a salient contrast to the experiments in 
which the attention was fixed in a definite direction. 
For example, the subject is thinking of the letter O ; 
he does not think of it as in any special place, and the 
record (Fig. 26) likewise reveals no movement in any 
one direction. Two records are shown quite similar in 
significance, and illustrating as well the difference be- 
tween the movements while standing and while sitting. 



334 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

VI 

There have thus been passed in review a variety of 
involuntary movements obtained in different ways, and 
with bearings upon many points of importance to the 
psychologist. They by no means exhaust the possi- 
bilities of research, or the deduction of conclusions in 
this field of study ; but they may serve to illustrate 
how subtle and intricate are the expressions of the 
thoughts that lie within. That involuntary movements 
are by no means limited to the type here illustrated is 
easily shown. In the exhibitions of muscle-reading, 
the changes in breathing, the flushing, the tremor of 
the subject when the reader approaches the hiding- 
place, and the relative relaxation when he is on the 
wrong scent, serve as valuable clues ; to borrow the 
apt expression of " hide and seek," the performer grows 
" hot " and " cold " with his subject. Then, too, the 
tentative excursions in one direction and another, to 
determine in which the subject follows with least re- 
sistance, present another variation of the same process. 
The hushed calm of the audience when success is near, 
the restlessness and whispering during a false scent, 
are equally welcome suggestions which a clever per- 
former freely utilizes, thereby adding to the eclat of 
his exhibition. When a combination of numbers or 
of letters in a word is to be guessed, the operator 
passes over with the subject the several digits or the 
alphabet, and notes at which the tell-tale tremor or 
mark of excitement occurs, and so again performs the 
feat on the basis of the involuntary contractions that 
express the slight changes of attention or interest when 
the correct number or letter is indicated. In much the 



A STUDY OF INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS 335 

same way we unwittingly betray our feelings and emo- 
tions, our interest or distraction or ennui ; the correct 
interpretation of these in others and their suppression 
in one's self form part of the artificial complexity of 
social intercourse. But in the line of experimental 
demonstration also, another form of involuntary move- 
ment has been brought forward in recent years by the 
investigation of Hansen and Lehmann upon " involun- 
tary whispering." This investigation brings out the 
fact that many of us, when we think intently of a num- 
ber, tend to innervate the mechanism appropriate to its 
utterance. We do not actually speak or whisper the 
word or sound, but we initiate the process. If one 
person thinks of a number, — say from one to ten, or 
from one to one hundred, — and the other records any 
number which at the same moment suggests itself to 
him, it may result that the proportion of correct or 
partially correct guesses exceeds that which chance 
would produce ; and arguments for telepathy have 
been based on such results. In the series of experi- 
ments in question these "involuntary whisperings " were 
not severely suppressed, — much as in the automato- 
graph tests one might determine to let the glass move 
if it would. It must be understood that there was no 
true whispering nor any movement of the speaking 
mechanism which a bystander could detect ; and yet it 
seems likely that the one participant was influenced in 
his guessing by the vague but yet real, subconscious, 
embryonic articulation of the other. The proof of 
this lies mainly in the analysis of the successes and 
errors ; for the confusions are strikingly between nu- 
merals of somewhat similar sound, — as between four- 
teen and forty, or sixty and thirty, or six and seven. 



336 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

If the two persons are seated in the respective foci of 
two concave surfaces which collect the sound (thus in a 
measure paralleling the exalted sensibility of specially- 
gifted or hypnotized subjects), the chances of success 
seem to be increased. While the investigation is both 
complex and incomplete, yet the general trend of it is 
sufficiently clear to make it probable that " involuntary 
whispering ^' serves more or less frequently as a sub- 
conscious and involuntary indication of thought. It 
shows again that below the threshold of conscious 
acquisition and intentional expression lie a consider- 
able range of activities, which though they blossom 
unseen do not quite waste their fragrance, but come 
wafted over in vague and subtle essence. The falling 
of a drop of water is unheard, but the sound of the 
roaring torrent is but the sound of myriads of drops. 
The boundary between the conscious and the uncon- 
scious is broad and indefinite ; and vague influences, if 
not direct messages, pass from one side to the other. 

The general bearing of the study of involuntary 
movements I have indicated at the outset ; and no 
elaborate comment on the practical significance of the 
results described seems necessary. They certainly 
facilitate the appreciation of the reality of the subcon- 
scious and the involuntary; and in connection with 
explanations of muscle-reading or telepathy, they illus- 
trate how naturally a neglect of this realm of psycho- 
logical activity may lead to false conclusions. They 
bring a striking corroboration of the view that thought 
is but more or less successfully suppressed action, and 
as a well-known muscle-reader expresses it, all willing 
is either pushing or pulling. 



THE DEEAMS OF THE BLIND 



Man is predominantly a visual animal. To him 
seeing is believing, — a saying which in canine par- 
lance might readily become smelling is believing. 
We teach by illustrations, models, and object-lessons, 
and reduce complex relations to the curves of the gra- 
phic method, to bring home and impress our state- 
ments. Our every-day language, as well as the im- 
agery of poetry, abounds in metaphors and similes 
appealing to images which the eye has taught us to 
appreciate. The eye is also the medium of impressions 
of aesthetic as well as of intellectual value ; and one 
grand division of art is lost to those who cannot see. 
The eye, too, forms the centre of emotional expression, 
and reveals to our fellow-men the subtile variations in 
mood and' passion, as it is to the physician a delicate 
index of our well-being. There are reasons for believ- 
ing that it was the function of sight as a distance-sense 
that led to its supremacy in the lives of our primitive 
ancestors. Whatever its origin, the growth of civiliza- 
tion has served to develop this eye-mindedness of the 
race, and to increase and diversify the modes of its 
cultivation. 

The eye, thus constantly stimulated in waking life, 
and attracting to its sensations the focus of attention, 
possessing, as it does, in the retinal fovea a special and 



338 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

unique aid to concentrative attention, does not yield up 
its supremacy in the world of dreams. The visual 
centres subside but slowly from their day's stimulation ; 
and the rich stock of images which these centres have 
stored up is completely at the service of the fancy that 
guides our dreams. Indeed, the dream itself is spoken 
of as a vision. 

Though, as a race, we are eye-minded, individually 
we differ much with regard to the role that sight plays 
in our psychic life. In one direction a good index of 
its importance is to be found in the perfection of the 
visualizing faculty, of which Mr. Galton has given an 
interesting account. He asked various persons to de- 
scribe, amongst other things, the vividness of theii 
mental picture when calling to mind the morning's 
breakfast-table. To some the mental scene was as 
clear and as natural as reality, lacking none of the de- 
tails of form or color ; to others the resulting mental 
image was tolerably distinct, with the conspicuous fea- 
tures well brought out, but the rest dim and ill-defined ; 
while a third group could only piece together a very 
vague, fragmentary, and unreliable series of images, 
with no distinct or constant picture. 

Similar differences are observable with regard to 
memories. Some persons firmly retain what they read, 
while the memory forte of others is in what they hear ; 
and pathology supports this subdivision of the sense- 
memories by showing, for example, that all remem- 
brance for seen objects may be lost while that for 
sounds remains intact. A case, remarkable in several 
aspects, is recorded by M. Charcot. The subject in 
question could accurately call up, in full detail, all the 



THE DREAMS OF THE BLIND 339 

scenes of his many travels, could repeat pages of his 
favorite authors from the mental picture of the printed 
page, and by the same means could mentally add long 
columns of numbers. The mere mention of a scene in 
a play, or of a conversation with a friend, immediately 
brought up a vivid picture of the entire circumstance. 
Through nervous prostration he lost this visual mem- 
ory. An attempt to sketch a familiar scene now re- 
sulted in a childish scrawl; he remembered little of 
his correspondence, forgot the appearance of his wife 
and friends, and even failed to recognize his own image 
in a mirror. Yet his eyesight was intact and his intel- 
lect unimpaired. In order to remember things he had 
now to have them read aloud to him, and thus brinoj 
into play his undisturbed auditory centre — to him an 
almost new experience. 

The function of vision in dreams is doubtless subject 
to similar individual variations, though probably to a 
less extent. Seeing, with rare exceptions, constitutes 
the typical operation in dreams ; it is this sense, too, 
that, under the influence of drugs or of other excite- 
ment, is most readily stimulated into morbid action, 
and most easily furnishes the basis of delusions and 
hallucinations to a disordered mind. The dependence 
of the nature and content of dreams upon the waking 
experiences is so clearly proven that it would be sur- 
prising not to find in them the individual character- 
istics of our mental processes ; and if Aristotle is right 
in saying that in waking life we all have a world in 
common, but in dreams each has a world of his own, we 
may look to the evidence of dream-life for indications 
of unrestrained and distinctive psychological traits. 



840 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

II 

With regard to the blind, much of what has been 
said above is entirely irrelevant. However intimately 
we appreciate the function of sight in our own mental 
development, it is almost impossible to imagine how 
different our life would have been had we never seen. 
But here, at the outset, a fundamental distinction must 
be drawn between those blind from birth or early in- 
fancy, and those who lose their sight in youth or adult 
life.^ " It is better to have seen and lost one's sight 
than never to have seen at all," is quite as true as the 
sentiment which this form of statement parodies. Ex- 
pressed physiologically, this means, that to have begun 
the general brain-building process with the aid of the 
eye insures some further self-development of the visual 
centre, and thus makes possible a kind of mental 
possession of which those born blind are inevitably 
deprived.^ 

^ A noted blind teacher of the blind says . " Wenn wir . . . den Ein- 
fluss der Blindheit auf die geistige Thatigkeit des Blinden beobaehten, 
so haben wir Blindgeborene und Blindgewordene . . . streng auseinan- 
der zu halten." 

2 This applies mainly to intellectual acquirements. The emotional 
life of those who have lost their sight is often, and with much truth, 
regarded as sadder and more dreary than that of the eongenitally blind ; 
the former regretfully appreciate what they have lost ; the latter live 
in a different and more meagre world, but have never known any other. 
It is interesting in this connection to trace the influence of the age of 
"blinding" (sit venia verbo) on the mental development of eminent 
blind men and women. Of a list of 125 blind persons of very various 
degrees of talent, which I have been able to collect, the age of blinding 
was (approximately) ascertainable in 114 cases. Of these about 11 are 
really very distinguished, and 10 of them (the exception is the wonder- 
ful mathematician, Nicholas Saunderson) became blind either in ad- 



THE DREAMS OF THE BLIND 3il 

A fact o£ prime importance regarding the develop- 
ment of the sight-centre is the age at which its educa- 
tion is sufficiently completed to enable it to continue its 
function without further object-lessons on the part of 
the retina. If we accept as the test of the independent 
existence of the sight-centre its automatic excitation in 
dreams, the question can be answered by determining 
the age of the onset of blindness, which divides those 
who do not from those who still retain in their dream- 
life the images derived from the world of sight. The 
data that enable me to answer this question were gath- 
ered at the Institutions for the Blind in Philadelphia 
and Baltimore. Nearly 200 persons of both sexes were 
personally examined, and their answers to quite a long 
series of questions recorded. All dates and ages were 
verified by the register of the institution, and the 
degree of sight was tested. 

Beginning with cases of total blindness (including 
under this head those upon whom light has simply a 
general subjective " heat-effect," enabling them to dis- 
tinguish between night and day, between shade and 
sunshine, but inducing little or no tendency to project 
the cause of the sensation into the external world), I find 
on my list fifty-eight such cases. Of these, thirty-two 

vanced youth, middle life, or still later ; of the group next in eminence 
(about 25) the average age of the onset of blindness is in early youth (at 
nine or ten years) ; and those earliest blind are generally musicians, 
■who least of all require sight for their calling. The average age of 
blinding of the rest of the list — whose achievements would for the 
most part not have been recorded had they not been those of blind per- 
sons — is as low as seven years, while that of the musicians (about 15 
in the group) is little over three years. All this speaks strongly for 
the permanent intellectual importance of sight in early education. 



342 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

became blind before the completion of their fifth year, 
and not one of this gronp of thirty-two sees in dreams. 
Six became blind between the fifth and the seventh 
year : of these, four have dreams of seeing, but two of 
them do so seldom and with some vagueness ; while two 
never dream of seeing at all. Of twenty persons who 
became blind after their seventh year all have " dream- 
vision " — as I shall term the faculty of seeing in 
dreams. The period from the fifth to the seventh year 
is thus indicated as the critical one. Before this age 
the visual centre is undergoing its elementary educa- 
tion ; its life is closely dependent upon the constant 
food-supply of sensations ; and when these are cut off 
by blindness, it degenerates and decays. If blindness 
occurs between the fifth and the seventh years, the pre- 
servation of the visualizing power depends on the de- 
gree of development of the individual. If the faculty 
is retained, it is neither stable nor pronounced. If 
sight is lost after the seventh year, the sight-centre can, 
in spite of the loss, maintain its function ; and the 
dreams of such an individual may be hardly distin- 
guishable from those of a seeing person. 

It was a very unexpected discovery, to find, after I 
had planned and partly completed this investigation, 
that I had a predecessor. So long ago as 1838, Dr. 
G. Heermann studied the dreams of the blind with the 
view of determining this same question, the physiologi- 
cal significance of which, however, was not then clearly 
understood. He records the answers of fourteen totally 
blind persons who lost their sight previous to their fifth 
year, and none of these has dream-vision. Of four who 
lost their sight between the fifth and the seventh year, 



THE DREAMS OF THE BLIND 343 

one has dream-vision : one has it dimly and occasion- 
ally ; and two do not definitely know. Of thirty-five 
who became blind after their seventh year all have 
dream-vision. The two independent researches thus 
yield the very same conclusion. Dr. Heermann in- 
cludes in his list many aged persons, and from their 
answers is able to conclude that, generally speaking, 
those who become blind in mature life retain the power 
of dream-vision longer than those who become blind 
nearer the critical age of five to seven years. He re- 
cords twelve cases where dream-vision still continues 
after a blindness of from ten to fifteen years, four of 
from fifteen to twenty years, four of from twenty to 
twenty-five years, and one of thirty-five years. In one 
case dream-vision was maintained for fifty -two, and in 
another for fifty-four years, but then faded out.^ 

With regard to the partially blind, the question 
most analogous to the persistence of dream-vision after 
total blindness, is whether or not the dream-vision is 
brighter and clearer than that of waking life ; whether 
the sight-centre maintains the full normal power to 
which it was educated, or whether the partial loss of 
sight has essentially altered and replaced it. To this 
rather difficult question I have fewer and less satisfac- 

1 Dr. Heermann's observations also enable us to trace the anatomical 
conditions underlying the power of dream- vision. From ten cases in 
•which post-mortem examinations were held, he concludes that, allow- 
ing- for much individual difference, after about twenty years the optic 
nerves degenerate, and often as far back as the chiasraa. This shows 
that the nerve is not necessary for dream-vision, and thus goes to prove 
that the process is dependent on cerebral organs — a valuable piece of 
evidence fifty years ago. Esquirol records a case of sight-hallucina- 
tions in a blind woman, again indicating the same conclusion. 



344 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

tory answers tlian to the former inquiry ; but the evi- 
dence is perfectly in accord with the previous conclu- 
sions. Of twenty-three who describe their dream-vision 
as only as clear as waking sight, all became blind not 
later than the close of their ^i^A year ; while of twenty- 
four whose dream-vision is more or less markedly 
dearer than their partial sight, all lost their full sight 
not earlier than their sixth year} The age that marks 
off those to whom total blindness carries with it the 
loss of dream-vision from those whose dream-vision 
continues, is thus the age at which the sight-centre has 
reached a sufficient stage of development to enable it 
to maintain its full function, when partially or totally 
deprived of retinal stimulation. The same age is also 
assigned by some authorities as the limiting age at 
which deafness will cause muteness (unless special 
pains be taken to prevent it) ; while later the vocal 
organs, though trained to action by the ear, can per- 
form their duties without the teacher's aid. This, too, 

^ A further interesting- question regarding' the dream-vision of the 
partially blind is, How much must they be able to see in order to dream 
of seeing ? In answering this question, the blind give the name " see- 
ing " to what is really a complex of sensations and judgments, and this 
sam^e complex may enter into their dreams. Cases occur in which 
there is only the slightest renmant of sight, and yet this forms a factor 
in dream-life. It is a very imperfect kind of vision, and acts more as 
a general sense of illumination, and as an anticipatory sense. Generally 
speaking, those who know color have more frequent and brighter 
dream-vision than those who distinguish light and shade only. For 
example, of those partially blind from birth, such as see color tolerably 
well (there are sixteen such) have regular dream-vision — of course, no 
clearer than their best days of sight. Of eleven who have sonae faint 
notion of color, three have dream-vision regularly ; six have it rarely, 
while two (almost never or) never have it. Of eleven who can see no 
color at all, ten have no dream- vision, and one has it occasionally. 



THE DREAMS OF THE BLIND 345 

is assigned as the earliest age at which we have a re- 
membrance of ourselves. This last statement I am 
able to test by one hundred answers, collected among 
these blind persons, to the question, " What is your 
earliest remembrance of yourself ? " The average age 
to which these memories go back is 5.2 years ; seventy- 
nine instances being included between the third and 
the sixth years. At this period of child development 
— the centre of which is at about the close of the fifth 
year — there seems to be a general declaration of in- 
dependence of the sense-centres from their food-supply 
of sensations. Mr. Sully finds sense, imagination, and 
abstraction to be the order in which the precocity of 
great men reveals itself ; and the critical period which 
we are now considering seems to mark the point at 
which imagination and abstraction as permanent men- 
tal powers ordinarily come into pla,y. M. Perez like- 
wise recognizes the distinctive character of this era of 
childhood by making the second part of his " Child 
Psychology " embrace the period from the third to the 
seventh year. 

Ill 

The general fact thus brought to light — that the 
mode in which a brain-centre will function depends so 
largely upon its initial education, but that, this edu- 
cation once completed, the centre can maintain its func- 
tion, though deprived of sense-stimulation — is suffi- 
ciently important to merit further illustration.^ This 

1 That even a comparatively slight disturbance of vision, affecting- 
only a small portion of the visual experience, can leave a permanent 
trace upon the sight-centre is naade very probable by a case (recorded 
by Dr. McCosh, Cognitive Powers, p. 106) of a young man whose defect 



346 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

fact, though very clear and evident when stated from a 
modern point of view, has not always been recognized. 
So ingenious a thinker as Erasmus Darwin inferred 
from two cases (the one of a blind man, the other of a 
deaf-mute) in which the wanting senses were also 
absent in dreams, that the peripheral sense-organ was 
necessary for all perception, subjective as well as 
objective ; and entirely neglected the age at which the 
sense was lost. Such noted physiologists as Reil, Eu- 
dolphi, Hartman, Wardrop (who says, " when an 
organ of sense is totally destroyed, the ideas which 
were received by that organ seem to perish along with 
it as well as the power of perception "), more or less 
distinctly favored this view ; while some teachers of 
the blind and the physiologists Nasse and Autentreith 
rightly drew the distinction between those born, and 
those who became, blind. An experimental demon- 
stration of the original dependence of the perceptive 
and emotional powers upon sense-impressions was fur- 
nished by Boffi and Schiff, who found that young dogs 
whose olfactory bulbs had been removed failed to 
develop any affection for man. 

What is true of the visual, is doubtless equally true 
of the other perceptive centres. The dreams of the 

consisted in his seeing everything- double, — a defect which a subse- 
quent operation removed. " If I attempt," he writes, " to recall scenes 
that I saw while my eyes were out of order, I invariably see them as 
they appeared during that time, although I may have seen them many 
times since the operation. For instance, in the ease of the minister in 
the pulpit at home, I see two images of him, no matter how much I 
may try to get rid of one of them. . . . My recollection of the office 
in which the operation was performed, as also of everything in it, is 
double, although I saw it only twice before the restoration of my sight, 
and many times after. The objects which I have seen since the opera- 
tion are always single when recalled." 



THE DREAMS OF THE BLIND 347 

deaf-mute offer an attractive and untouched field for 
such stud}^^ The few accounts of such dreams that I 
have met with, fail to give the age at which deafness 
set in ; in one case, however, in which deafness oc- 
curred at thirty years, the pantomimic had replaced 
the spoken language in the dreams of thirty years 
later. Similarly, cripples dream of their lost limbs for 
many years after their loss ; in such cases, however, 
stimulation of the cut nerves may be the suggestive 
cause of such dreams. A man of forty, who lost his 
right arm seventeen years before, still dreams of hav- 
ing the arm. The earliest age of losing and dreaming 
about a lost limb, of which I find a record, is of a boy 
of thirteen years who lost a leg at the age of ten ; this 
boy still dreams of walking on his feet. Those who 
are born cripples must necessarily have their defects 
represented in their dream consciousness. Heermann 
cites the case of a man born without hands, forearms, 
feet, or lower legs. He always dreamt of walking on 
his knees ; and all the peculiarities of his movements 
were present in his dream-life. 

The dreams of those both blind and deaf are espe- 
cially instructive. Many of Laura Bridgman's dreams 
have been recorded ; and an unpublished manuscript 
-by Dr. G. Stanley Hall places at my service a valuable 
account of her sleep and dreams. Sight and hearing 
were as absent from her dreams as they were from the 
dark and silent world which alone she knew. The 
tactual-motor sensations, by which she communicated 
with her fellow-beings, and through which almost all 

1 I have gathered considerable data in reg-ard to the dreams of the 
deaf, but they are not ready for definite formulation. 



348 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

her intellectual food reached her, also formed her 
mainstay in dreams. This accounts for the sudden- 
ness and fright with which she often waked from her 
dreams ; she is perchance dreaming of an animal, 
which to us would first make itself seen or heard, but 
to her is present only when it touches and startles 
her^ — for she lacks any anticipatory sense. Language 
has become so all-important a factor in civilized life, 
that it naturally is frequently represented in dreams. 
We not only dream of speaking and being spoken to, 
but we actually innervate the appropriate muscles and 
talk in our sleep ; this Laura Bridgman also did. 
" Her sleep seemed almost never undisturbed by 
dreams. Again and again she would suddenly talk a 
few words or letters with her fingers, too rapidly and 
too imperfectly to be intelligible (just as other people 
utter incoherent words and inarticulate sounds in sleep)? 
but apparently never making a sentence." ^ So, too, 

1 From Dr. Hall's manuscript. Dr. Hall had the opportunity of 
observing her during three short naps, and has incorporated a part of 
his manuscript into a paper on Laura Bridgman, republished in his 
Aspects of German Culture, pp. 268-270. From this manuscript I take 
the following illustrations of her dreams, and her method of describing 
them. They are recorded verbatim. 

" Question. ' Do you dream often ? ' Answer. ' Very often, many 
things.' Q. ' Did you think hard yesterday to remember dreams for 
me ? ' A. 'I did try, but I always forget very soon.' Q. ' Did you 
ever dream to hear?' [Her idiom for 'that you could hear.'] A. 
Only the angels playing in heaven.' Q. ' How did it sound ? ' A. 
'Very beautiful.' Q. 'Like what?' A. 'Nothing.' Q. 'Was it 
loud ? ' J.. ' Yes, very.' Q. ' What instrument ? ' A. ' Piano.' Q. 
' How did the angels look ? ' y1. ' Beautiful.' Q. ' Had they wings ? ' 
A. ' I could not know.' Q. ' Were they men or women ? ' A. ^ Don't 
know.' Q. ' Can you describe their dress ? ' A. ' No.' Q. ' Was the 
music fast or slow ? ' A. ^I cannot tell.' On another occasion she was 



THE DREAMS OF THE BLIND 349 

all the people who enter into her dreams talk with 
their fingers. This habit had already presented itself 
at the age of twelve, four years after her first lesson 
in the alphabet. " I do not dream to talk with month ; 
I dream to talk with fingers." No prettier illustra- 

asked, ' Did you ever dream to see ? ' A. ^1 could see the sun.' Q. 
' How did it look ? ' A. ' Glorious.' Q. * What color ? ' A. 'I can- 
not tell ' [with a sign of great impatience]. Q. ' Was it very bright ? ' 
A. ' Yes.' Q. ' Did it hurt your eyes ? ' A. ^ Yes, they ached.' Q. 
' What was it like ? ' -4. ' Nothing. I saw it with my eyes ' [much 
excited, breathing hard and fast, and pointing to her right eye]. Some 
days later, after some promptings from her attendants, she renewed 
the subject of her own accord, as follows : ' I remember once a dream. 
I was in a very large place. It was very glorious and full of people. 
My father and naother were standing by. The glorious piano was 
playing. When I heard the music I raised up my hand so ' [standing 
and pointing impressively upward and forward with the index finger, 
as the letter g is made in the deaf and dumb alphabet] ' to my heavenly 
Father. I tried to say God.' Q. ' With your fingers ? ' u4. ' Yes.' 
Q. 'Where was God?' A. 'So' [pointing as before]. Q. 'Far 
away ?' A. ' No.' Q. ' Could you touch him ? ' J.. ' No.' Q. ' How 
did you know he was there ? ' A. ^1 cannot tell.' Q. ' How did you 
know it was God ? ' A. ^I cannot explain.' Q. ' What was he like ? ' A. 
[After a pause] ' I cannot tell everything to everybody ' [half playfully, 
whipping her right hand with her left, and touching her forehead sig- 
nificantly, to indicate that she was unable adequately to express what 
was in her mind]. Q. 'Could he touch you ? ' A. 'No. He is a 
spirit.' Q. ' Did he see you ? ' A. ^ He sees everything. See how 
melancholy I look because I do not feel interested.' On another occa- 
sion she said, ' I often dream that Doctor Howe is alive and very sick,' 
but no details could be elicited. Again, after imitating the gait of 
different people, she said, ' I dream often of people walking. I dream 
many things, but do not remember what I really dream. I used to 
dream of animals running around the room, and it woke me.' " 

It is evident that her dreams of hearing and seeing were either 
merely verbal, or the substitution and elaboration of kindred sensa- 
tions (sense of jar and heat) which she experienced. For further ex- 
amples of her dreams see her Life and Education, by Mrs. Lamson, 
pp. 88, 154, 166-168, 218, 223, 224, 226, 286, 290, 303, 304. 



350 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

tion could be given of the way in which her fancy- 
built upon her real experiences, than the fact recorded 
by Charles Dickens, that on picking up her doll he 
found across its eyes a green band such as she herself 
wore. The organic sensations originating in the vis- 
cera, though often prominently represented in dreams 
of normal persons, seemed especially prominent in 
her dreams. She tells of feeling her blood rush 
about, and of her heart beating fast when suddenly 
waking, much frightened, from a distressing dream. 
One such dream she describes as " hard, heavy, and 
thick ; " terms which, though to us glaringly inap- 
propriate in reference to so fairy-like a structure 
as a dream, form an accurate description in the 
language of her own realistic senses. In short, her 
dreams are accurately modeled upon the experiences 
of her waking life, reproducing in detail all the pecul- 
iarities of thought and action which a very special 
education had impressed upon her curious mind. 

I have had the opportunity of questioning a blind and 
deaf young man whose life-history offers a striking con- 
trast to that of Laura Bridgman, and illustrates with 
all the force of an experimental demonstration the 
critical educational importance of the early years of 
life. He was, at the time of my questioning him, 
twenty-three years of age, and was earning a comfort- 
able living as a broom-maker. He had an active interest 
in the affairs of the world, and disliked to be considered 
in any way peculiar. His eyesight began to fail him 
in early childhood ; and in his fifth year the sight of 
one eye was entirely lost, while that of the other was 
very poor. After a less gradual loss of hearing, he 



THE DREAMS OF THE BLIND 351 

became completely deaf in his ninth year. At the age 
of twelve he was (practically) totally blind, deaf, and 
nearly mute. The small remnant of articulating 
power has been cultivated ; and those who are accus- 
tomed to it can understand his spoken language. He 
also communicates as Laura Bridgman did, and has 
a further advantage over her in possessing a very acute 
sense of smell. He remembers the world of sight and 
hearing perfectly, and in a little sketch of his life 
which he wrote for me vividly describes the sights 
and sounds of his play-days. He usually dreams of 
seeing and hearing, though the experiences of his pres- 
ent existence also enter into his dreams. Some of his 
dreams relate to flowers which he smelled and saw ; 
he dreamt of being upset in a boat ; shortly after his 
confirmation he dreamt of seeing God. When he 
dreams of making brooms, his dream is entirely in 
terms of motion and feeling, not of sight. His history 
thus strongly emphasizes the importance which a variety 
of evidence attributes to the period of childhood, and 
perhaps especially to that from the third to the seventh 
year. 

The remarkable powers which Helen Keller has ex- 
hibited throughout her phenomenal education give to 
an account of her dream life an especial interest. I am 
fortunate in being able to present her own account as 
she prepared it at my solicitation. The wealth and 
brilliancy of her imagination frequently lead to modes 
of expression which seem to brusquely contradict her 
sightless and soundless condition. But a careful ob- 
servation of her mental activities brings out the verbal 
or literary character of such allusions, in certain cases 



352 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

essentially aided by associations with impressions of the 
senses that remain to her. In such cases her familiar- 
ity, through literature and through intercourse, with 
the experiences of the hearing and seeing and with the 
emotional and intellectual associations that ordinary 
persons might have with definite scenes or occasions, 
enables her to realize, and her vivid imagination to 
construct, a somewhat idealized account of her vicari- 
ous experiences, though perhaps real emotions. Her 
dream life seems in complete concordance with her 
waking condition ; but this imaginative factor must be 
constantly borne in mind in reading her report of her 
dream life. The intrinsic interest of this human docu- 
ment, and the charm of the narrative, present so lifelike 
and almost confidential a portrayal of her world of 
dreams, that any elaborate comment would be unneces- 
sary. It should be remembered that Helen Keller be- 
came totally blind and deaf at nineteen months ; that 
her instruction began at the age of seven years ; that 
she learned to speak orally from her eleventh year ; 
that at present she speaks orally almost exclusively, 
although very proficient in the use of the finger alpha- 
bet ; that she is able to understand what is said to her 
by placing her fingers upon the lips and throat of the 
speaker, but that the more expeditious and certain mode 
of communicating with her is by making the letters of 
the finger-alphabet in the palm of her hand. This latter 
method she uses entirely with her teacher and with all 
who are conversant with it. This account of her dreams 
was prepared in August, 1900, when she was twenty 
years of age ; it was written off-hand by her on a 
type-writer, and is presented in its original form. 



THE DREAMS OF THE BLIND 353 

My Dreams 

" It is no exaggeration to say that I live two distinct 
lives, — one in the everyday world and the other in 
the Land of Nod ! Like most people I generally for- 
get my dreams as soon as I wake up in the morning ; 
but I know that when I dream I am just as active and 
as much interested in everything — trees, books and 
events — as when I am awake. 

" My dreams have strangely changed during the past 
twelve years. Before and after my teacher first came 
to me, they were devoid of sound, or thought or emo- 
tion of any kind, except fear, and only came in the 
form of sensations. I would often dream that I ran 
into a still, dark room, and that, while I stood there, I 
felt something fall heavily without any noise, causing 
the floor to shake up and down violently ; and each time 
I woke up with a jump. As I learned more and more 
about the objects around me, this strange dream ceased 
to haunt me ; but I was in a high state of excitement 
and received impressions very easily. It is not strange 
then that I dreamed at that time of a wolf, which 
seemed to rush towards me and put his cruel teeth 
deep into my body ! I could not speak (the fact was, I 
could only spell with my fingers), and I tried to scream ; 
but no sound escaped from my lips. It is very likely 
that I had heard the story of Red Eiding Hood, and 
was deeply impressed by it. This dream, however, 
passed away in time, and I began to dream of objects 
outside cf myself. 

" I never spelled with my fingers in my sleep ; but I 
have often spoken, and one night I actually laughed. 



354 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

I was dreaming of a great frolic with my schoolmates 
at the Perkins Institution. But, if I do not use the 
manual alphabet in my dreams, my friends sometimes 
spell to me. Their sentences are always brief and 
vague. I obtain information in a very curious manner, 
which it is difficult to describe. My mind acts as a 
sort of mirror, in which faces and landscapes are re- 
flected, and thoughts, which throng unbidden in my 
brain, describe the conversation and the events going 
on around me. 

" I remember a beautiful and striking illustration of 
the peculiar mode of communication I have just men- 
tioned. One night I dreamed that I was in a lovely 
mansion, all built of leaves and flowers. My thoughts 
declared the floor was of green twigs, and the ceiling of 
pink and white roses. The walls were of roses, pinks, 
hyacinths, and many other flowers, loosely arranged 
so as to make the whole structure wavy and graceful. 
Here and there I saw an opening between the leaves, 
which admitted the purest air. I learned that the 
flowers were imperishable, and with such a wonderful 
discovery thrilling my spirit I awoke. 

" I do not think I have seen or heard more than once 
in my sleep. Then the sunlight flashed suddenly on 
my eyes, and I was so dazzled I could not think or 
distinguish anything. When I looked up, some one 
spelled hastily to me, ' Why, you are looking back upon 
your babyhood ! ' As to the sound I heard, it was like 
the rushing of a mighty cataract, and reminded me 
forcibly of my visit to Niagara Falls. I remembered 
as if it were yesterday how I had come very close to 
the water and felt the great roar by placing my hand 



THE DREAMS OF THE BLIND 355 

on a soft pillow. Now, however, I knew I was far 
away from the place whence the sound came, and the 
vibration fell clear, though not loud, upon my ear- 
drums ; so I concluded in my sleep that I reall}^ heard. 
What happened next I have entirely forgotten ; but 
in the morning I was deeply impressed by the only 
instance in which I had dreamed of hearing, and I 
wished I could go back to Dreamland, just to hear 
that far-off, inspiring sound. 

" Occasionally I think I am reading with my fingers, 
either Braille or line print, and even translating a little 
Latin, but always with an odd feeling that I am touch- 
ing forbidden fruit. Somehow I feel that the spirits of 
sleep are displeased if any thoughts of literature cross 
my mind. Still I am free to enjoy everything else — 
I can wander among flowers and trees and be with my 
friends, especially those who live at a distance from 
where I happen to be. Sometimes I am with my 
mother, and at other times with my sister Mildred. 
My teacher scarcely ever appears in my dreams ; but 
I know she would very often if a cruel fate should tear 
her away from me. I shall never forget the morning 
seven or eight years ago, when I dreamed that my dear 
friend. Bishop Brooks, was dying. A few hours later 
I found that my dream was a terrible reality. It is 
probable that I thought of him at the very moment when 
he was passing away, and I certainly wept in the same 
manner and in the same place while I dreamed, that I 
did afterwards ! 

" I hardly ever dream of anything that has happened 
the day before, although I sometimes have several dif- 
ferent dreams on the same night ; nor do I dream of 



356 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

the same things often. However, I dream oftenest o£ 
the unpleasant and horrible, no matter how happy and 
successful the day may have been. Indeed, I have 
found it unadvisable to read terrible stories or tragedies 
often, or in the evening. They impress me so pain- 
fully, and retain so firm a hold of my imagination that 
they sooner or later force themselves into my dreams. 
About two years ago I read in ' Sixty Years a Queen ' 
the story of the awful massacre at Cawnpore, which 
took place during the Indian Mutiny. It filled me 
with a horror that haunted me persistently for several 
days. At last I managed to banish these disagreeable 
feelings ; but one night a frightful distortion of the 
selfsame story appeared before my mind. I thought I 
was in a small prison. At first I only noticed a skele- 
ton hanging up on one of the walls ; then I felt a 
strange, awful sound, like heavy iron being cast down, 
and the most heartrending cries ensued. I was in- 
formed that twenty men were being put to death with 
the utmost cruelty. I rushed madly from one room to 
another, and, as each ruffian came out, I locked the 
door behind him, in the hope that some of the victims 
might thereby be saved. AU my efforts were futile, 
and I awoke with a sickening horror weighing down 
on my heart. I have also fancied that I saw cities on 
fire, and brave, innocent men dragged to a fiery mar- 
tyrdom. One instant I would stand in speechless 
bewilderment, as the flames leaped up, dark and glar- 
ing, into a black sky. The next moment I would be 
in the midst of the conflagration, trying to save some 
of the sufferers, and seeing in dismay how they slipped 
away beyond my power. At such times I have thought 



THE DREAMS OF THE BLIND 357 

myself the most wretched person in the world ; but in 
the morning the bright sunshine and fresh air of our 
^wn dear, beautiful world would chase away those hor- 
rible phantoms. 

" On the whole, my dreams are consistent with my 
feelings and sympathies ; but once I thought I was 
engaged in a great boat-race between Yale and Har- 
vard. Now, in reality I am always on Harvard's side 
in the great games ; but at that time I dreamed that I 
was a thorough Yale man ! Perhaps this inconsistency 
arose from the fact that a long time ago I had declared 
how glad I was of Harvard's failure to win a certain 
boat-race, because the Yale men rowed with the Ameri- 
can stroke and the Harvard men had learned the Eng- 
lish stroke. At any rate, sleeping or waking, I love 
my friends, and never think they change or grow un- 
kind. From time to time I make friends in my dreams ; 
but usually I am too busy running around and watch- 
ing other people to have any long conversations or 
' reveries.' 

" I am often led into pretty fantasies, of which I will 
give an illustration. Consternation was spread every- 
where because the news had been received of King 
Winter's determination to establish his rule perma- 
nently in the temperate zones. The stern monarch ful- 
filled his threat all too soon ; for, although it was mid- 
summer, yet the whole ocean was suddenly frozen, and 
all the boats and steamers were stuck fast in the ice. 
Commerce was ruined, and starvation was unavoidable. 
The flowers and trees shared in the universal sorrow, 
and bravely strove to keep alive through the summer. 
Finally, overcome by the intense cold, they dropped 



358 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

their leaves and blossoms, which they had kept fresh 
and spotless to the last. Slowly the flowers fluttered 
down and lay at King Winter's feet, silently supplicat- 
ing him to show mercy, but all in vain. They froze 
unheeded, and were changed into pearls, diamonds, 
and turquoises. 

" Another time I took it into my head to climb to the 
stars. I sprang up into the air, and was borne upward 
by a strong impulse. I could not see or hear ; but my 
mind was my guide as well as my interpreter. Higher 
and higher I rose, until I was very close to the stars. 
Their intense light prevented me from coming any 
nearer ; so I hung on invisible wings, fascinated by 
the rolling spheres and the constant play of light 
and shadow, which my thoughts reflected. All at once 
I lost my balance, I knew not how, and down, down I 
rushed through empty space, till I struck violently 
against a tree, and my body sank to the ground. The 
shock waked me up, and for a moment I thought all 
my bones were broken to atoms. 

" I have said all that I can remember concerning my 
dreams ; but what really surprises me is this ; some- 
times, in the midst of a nightmare, I am conscious of a 
desire to wake up, and I make a vigorous effort to 
break the spell. Something seems to hold my senses 
tightly, and it is only with a spasmodic movement that 
I can open my eyes. Even then I feel, or I think I 
feel, a rapid motion shaking my bed and a sound of 
light, swift footsteps. It seems strange to me that 
I should make such an effort to wake up, instead of 
doing it automatically." 

This faithful and dramatic sketch is replete with 



THE DREAMS OF THE BLIND 359 

specific as well as with generic corroborations of the 
distinctive results of the present inquiry. The differ- 
ences between the dream experiences of Helen Keller 
before and after education are quite consistent with 
comparable results in the cases of other defectives — 
although dreams of her uneducated period seem to 
occur rarely if at all, and it is not possible to deter- 
mine how soon after she began to speak, such speech- 
communication made its appearance in her dreams. It 
is interesting to note that oral speech, when once ac- 
quired, speedily superseded manual talking, and that 
automatic talking aloud in her sleep appeared ; the 
finger alphabet became almost obsolete in her waking 
life, and likewise in her dreams. Yet the persistence 
of early acquired habits is strikingly shown in her occa- 
sional unconscious tendency to talk to herself by form- 
ing the letters with one hand against the palm of the 
other. These processes she seems to utilize quite auto- 
matically and unconsciously as aids to composition or 
to " thinking aloud." 

In regard to the source and content of her dreams, 
the more realistic episodes reflect their perceptional 
origin in tactile and motor experiences ; such are the 
attack of the wolf, the fall from a height, the reception 
of information through the palm, reading the raised 
print, — while dreams of flying naturally present the 
same elaboration of sensory elements as in normally 
equipped individuals. The dreams of seeing and hear- 
ing probably reflect far more of conceptual interpreta- 
tion and imaginative inference than of true sensation ; 
yet they are in part built up upon a sensory basis, — 
in the former case, that of the heat sensations radiat- 



360 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

ing from a brilliant illumination (witness the flames of 
the conflagration, the "intense light" of the stars), in 
the latter of vibrational or jarring sensations communi- 
cated to the body (as in the torrent of Niagara). But, 
on the whole, the direct sensory tone of her dream life 
is weak ; while for this very reason, possibly, the im- 
aginative and " transferred " components are unusually 
dominant. The associative elaboration of fancies in 
dream life is rarely capable of simple analysis, and 
commonly reveals results, and not the processes or 
stages by which the results were reached. Dependent, 
as Helen Keller is so largely, upon the communication of 
others for her knowledge of what is going on about her, 
it is natural that this transferred communication should 
be important in her dream knowledge. That her con- 
sciousness of the process of such acquisition should be 
vague and difficult to express is natural; and the 
phrases " my thoughts declared," " my mind acts as a 
sort of mirror," " I was informed," are as satisfactory 
psychologically as could be expected. It is, however, 
in dreams not of external incidents involving vaguely 
transferred or directly communicated information, but 
in the free roamings of creative imagination, that the 
dream life of Helen Keller finds its most suitable 
metier ; it is in this direction that this dream narrative, 
reflecting, as it does, her rich emotional nature and 
enthusiastically sympathetic temperament, presents its 
most distinctive and attractive aspect. 

IV 

Eeturning to the general data regarding the dreams 
of the blind, the question that next suggests itself is 



THE DREAMS OF THE BLIND 3G1 

whether and how, in cases where blindness ensued after 
a remembered period of vision, the pre-blindness period 
is distinguished from the post-blindness period in 
dream-imagery. It was noticed, for instance, that the 
blind and deaf young man mentioned above, though 
seeing in his dreams, never thus saw the shop in which 
he worked. It is easy to imagine that the more or less 
sudden loss of sight, the immersion into a strange 
and dark world, would for a time leave the individual 
living entirely upon the past. His remembered expe- 
riences are richer and more vivid (we are supposing 
his blindness to occur after childhood) than those he 
now has ; he is learning a new language and translates 
everything back into the old. His dreams will natu- 
rally continue to be those of his seeing life. As his 
experiences in his new surroundings increase, and the 
memory of the old begins to fade, the tendency of 
recent impressions to arise in the automatism of dream- 
ing will bring the events of the post-blindness period 
as factors into his dreams. I find in my list only seven 
who do not have such dreams ; and in these the blind- 
ness has been on the average of only 2.8 years stand- 
ing. The average age of " blinding " of the seven is 
fifteen years, making it probable that the adaptation 
to the new environment has here been a slow one, and 
that such dreams will occur later on. On the other 
hand, cases occur in which, after three, two, or even 
one year's blindness, when the persons so afflicted were 
young, events happening within that period have been 
dreamed of. Heermann cites a case of a man of sev- 
enty who never dreamed of the hospital in which he 
had been living for eighteen years, and to which he 



362 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

was brought shortly after his blindness. This and 
other cases suggest that the more mature and settled 
the brain-tissue, the more difficult is it to impress 
upon it new conditions sufficiently deeply to have them 
appear in the automatic life of dreams. 

Whether there is a difference in the vividness, or 
any other characteristic which sight would lend, in the 
dreams of events before and after blindness, is a ques- 
tion to which I could obtain few intelligent and satis- 
factory answers ; but, as far as they go, the tendency 
of these replies is to show that when blindness ensues 
close upon the critical period of five to seven years of 
age, the power of vivid dream-vision is more exclu- 
sively limited to the events of the years of full sight ; 
and, as Heermann pointed out, this power is often sub- 
ject to a comparatively early decay. Similarly, I find 
that those who lose their sight near the critical age are 
not nearly so apt to retain color in their dream-vision 
as those who become blind later on. The average age 
of " blinding " of twenty-four persons who have colored 
dream-vision, is 16.6 years, including one case in which 
blindness set in as early as the seventh year. All who 
see enough to see color, have colored dream-vision. 

I also asked those who became blind in youth, or 
later, whether they were in the habit of giving imagin- 
ary faces to the persons they met after their blindness, 
and whether they ever saw such in their dreams. Some 
answered in very vague terms, but several undoubtedly 
make good use of this power, probably somewhat on 
the same basis as we imagine the appearance of emi- 
nent men of whom we have read or heard, but whose 
features we have never seen. When we remember 



THE DREAMS OF THE BLIND 363 

how erroneous such impressions often are, we can 
understand how easily it may mislead the blind. Such 
imaginary faces and scenes also enter into their dreams, 
but to a less extent than into those of the sighted. Dr. 
Kitto 1 quotes a letter from a musician who lost his 
sight when eighteen years old, but who retains a very 
strong visualizing power both in waking life and in 
dreams. The mention of a famous man, of a friend, 
or of a scene, always carries with it a visual picture, 
complete and vivid. Moreover, these images of his 
friends are reported to change as the friends grow old ; 
and he feels himself intellectually in no way different 
from the seeing. 

This leads naturally to the consideration of the 
power of the imagination in the blind. It is not dif- 
ficult to understand that they are deprived of one 
powerful means of cultivating this faculty, that the eye 
is in one sense the organ of the ideal. Their know- 
ledge is more realistic and tangible, and so their dreams 
often, though by no means always, lack all poetical 
characteristics, and are very commonplace. Ghosts, 
elves, fairies, monsters, and all the host of strange 
romance that commonly people dreams, are not nearly 
so well represented as in the dreams of the sighted. 
What is almost typical in the dreams of the latter is 

1 The Lost Senses, by John Kitto. Dr. Kitto draws an ingenious in- 
ference from the sonnet addressed by Milton to his deceased (second) 
wife, whom he married after the onset of his blindness. From the 
lines, " I tmst to have | Full sight of her in Heav'n without restraint," 
and " The face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight," etc., he argues 
that the poet was unable to imagine the face of his wife, which he had 
never really seen, and so saw the face veiled ; but hoped in the 
future world to have " full sight of her without restraint." 



364 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

unusual in the dreams of the blind, especially of those 
early blind. Many observe that such dreams grow 
rare as they outgrow their youth,^ which is probably 
true of the sighted. When the blind dream of ghosts 
they either hear them, and that usually not until they 
are close at hand, or they are actually touched by them. 
A blind man, describing a dream in which his friend 
appeared to him, said : " Then I dreamt that he tried 
to frighten me, and make believe he was a ghost, by 
pushing me down sideways^^ etc. By some the ghost 
is heard only; it has a rough voice, and its bones 
rattle ; or it pursues the victim, humming and groan- 
ing as it runs. 

Contrary to the opinions of some writers, I find 
hearing, and not the group of tactual-motor sensations, 
to be the chief sense with the blind, both in waking 
and in dreams. That hearing owes very much of this 
supremacy to its being the vehicle of conversation, 
goes without saying. Many of the blind dream almost 
exclusively in this sense, and it is quite generally 
spoken of as the most important. Even those who see 
a little, often regard hearing as their most useful sense ; 
those who see well enough to see color, almost invari- 
ably claim for their partial sight an importance exceed- 

1 I have evidence to indicate that among the blind (as probably 
amongst persons at large) women dream more extensively than men, 
that is, they have more " frequent " and fewer " occasional " dreamers 
than men. The period from five to nine years is richer in dreams than 
the period from ten to fourteen years, and from then on a slight de- 
crease with age occurs. It is to childhood, the period of lively imagi- 
nation and of a highly tinged emotional life (and to women, who 
present these characteristics more prominently than men), that dream- 
life bringrs its richest harvest. 



THE DREAMS OF THE BLIND 365 

ing that of hearing. Next in importance to hearing is 
the group of sensations accompanying motion. An 
important item in the dreams of the sighted is fur- 
nished by this complex of sensations, and the same is 
true of the blind ; almost all remember such dreams, 
and some make this their most important avenue of 
sensation. Yet such a purely artificial movement as 
reading the raised type with the finger almost never 
occurs in dreams. The boys dream of playing, run- 
ning, jumping, and so on ; the men of broom-making, 
piano-tuning, teaching, and similar work; the girls of 
sewing, fancy work, household work, and the like. 

There is often ascribed to the blind a somewhat 
mystical sense, by which they can tell the presence and 
even the nature of objects, and can feel their way. As 
far as such a power exists, it depends upon a complex 
group of sensations, and includes the cultivation of the 
irradiation sense, which we all possess. It is not at all 
difficult to tell whether a large object is within a few 
inches of the hand, by the fact that it modifies the air 
current and heat radiations reaching the hand. This 
is especially the case if the temperature of the object 
be somewhat different from that of the room, or if it 
be an object like metal, which rapidly exchanges its 
heat. In sunlight the shadows of stones and posts can 
be thus detected ; and the illumination of a room, both 
as to its source and extent, can be judged. This sense 
the blind carefully, though often unconsciously, culti- 
vate, and I have heard it spoken of by them as " facial 
perception," because the face seems to be most sensitive 
to this kind of change. Many mention that the power 
fails them under the influence of a headache or similar 



366 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

nervousness. The question whether the position of a 
door, whether opened or closed, could be told at a dis- 
tance was variously answered ; about half testified 
that they could do so mainly by the aid of this facial 
perception. This enters in a vague way into their 
dreams, but seldom plays an important role. 

The stories attributing to the blind rather wonderful 
notions of color have, on careful examination, been 
readily explained by natural means ; the use of words 
referring to color is often merely verbal (of this both 
Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller furnish many ex- 
cellent examples), while the knowledge of the colors 
of special objects is obtained by inference, based upon 
texture, appropriateness, and similar characteristics. 
The analogies between color and sound have been fre- 
quently described within recent years. Mr. Galton has 
recorded many cases in which the sounds of the vowels, 
of words, of musical notes, and the like, immediately 
sununon to the mental eye an appropriate color, often 
with a peculiar outline and shading. One person could 
actually read sounds out of a wall-paper pattern, or 
write the sounds in the name Francis Galton in colors. 
It seemed possible that the blind might obtain or re- 
ceive some dim notions of color by a similar process ; 
and Dr. Kitto and the blind teacher, Friedrich Scherer, 
mention that such is the case, though to a very slight 
extent. The latter calls musical instruments the bridofe 
across which color comes to him. (He became blind 
when two years old.) The flute is his symbol of 
green, the swelling organ tones of blue. The trumpet 
is red, the hunter's horn dark green and violet, a gen- 
eral confusion of tones is gray, while pink and crimson 



THE DREAMS OF THE BLIND 367 

are associated with the feeling of velvet. In my list 
occurs the record of a young man twenty years old, 
and blind for three years. He saw colors on hearing 
certain sounds soon after his blindness, and claims that 
he is thus able to keep alive his notions of color. To 
him an alto voice is gray ; a soprano, white ; a tenor, 
yellow; a bass, black. My own voice suggested a 
dark background. A few words are also colored to 
him ; the sound of Smith seems yellow. These analo- 
gies, however, are fanciful and rare. They belong to 
a region of mental phenomena, of great complexity, in 
which associations and idiosyncracies have free play, 
and seem as little capable of definite explanation as 
much of the stuff that dreams are made of. 

A brief selection of instances from the collection 
of dreams and parts of dreams which these blind peo- 
ple have put at my command, may serve to reinforce 
the several factors of the dream-life of the blind 
which have been commented upon. Many of the 
dreams present no special differentiation from those of 
the seeing, but the most carefully recorded ones usu- 
ally reveal some traces of a defective or peculiar apper- 
ception. A blind boy with more than usual imagina- 
tion dreamed that he was in a battle in which Alexander 
the Great put the Gauls to flight ; he heard the thun- 
der of the cannon, but saw no flash. A young man 
dreamed that his mother was dead ; this he knew by 
the cold touch of her body. He next heard the chant- 
ing of the Mass at her funeral. This young man 
at times improvises airs in his dreams. A partially- 
sighted girl dreams repeatedly of a wide river, and 
is afraid of being dashed across it, while anxious to 



368 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

secure the flowers on the opposite bank, which she 
dimly sees. A boy dreamed of being picked up by 
some mysterious agency, and then suddenly allowed to 
fall from a tremendous height. Here he awoke, and 
found his head at the foot of the bed. Another dreamed 
of the Judgment Day, mainly in terms of hearing. 
He was drawn to heaven by a rope, clinging to a pole 
used for exercising ; he heard the trumpets sounding, 
and the voices singing, and so on. One dreamed that 
he was on a steamboat which suddenly sank, where- 
upon he quietly walked ashore. Another, that his 
father saw some wild people in the water, and swam 
out and rescued them ; another, of a large conflagra- 
tion, of which he saw nothing, but was constantly re- 
ceiving reports from the bystanders. A girl dreamed 
that she was sent by her aunt to get a loaf of bread 
from the cellar, and was cautioned not to step too far 
down in the cellar, because there was water there ; 
upon arriving at the dangerous place she stood still, 
and called for her aunt. Another dreamed of chivalry, 
as the result of reading " Ivan hoe ; " another of visit- 
ing Lincoln and being much impressed with the strange- 
ness of the place ; another of her examination in 
physics — she placed a piece of glass on her finger, 
and showed its centre of gravity, when the glass fell 
and broke with a crash ; on another occasion she 
dreamed that she was sick, went to the doctor, and 
recovered her full sight, and things looked strange and 
unfamiliar when compared with the knowledge she 
had derived from touch. 



THE DREAMS OF THE BLIND 369 



The study of the dreams of the blind thus empha- 
sizes many points of interest in the nature and devel- 
opment of the cortical centres of the human brain ; 
it graphically illustrates the explanatory power of the 
modern view of their functions ; and it presents in a 
new aspect certain characteristics of their constitution. 
It shows beyond a question that the power of apper- 
ceiving sight-images is in no true sense innate, but is 
the product of slow development and long training. 
That the same holds true of other centres is proved by 
a mass of evidence gathered from many quarters ; with 
regard to the motor centres, it is even experimentally 
determined by the observation that stimulation of the 
central convolutions of the brains of puppies fails to 
excite the appropriate movements of the legs, unless the 
puppies are already nine or ten days old. These facts 
will be utilized in the formulation of an important de- 
velopmental law applicable alike to physiological and 
to psychological processes. 

The "critical period," revealed by the above re- 
search, must not be understood as marking the point 
at which the visual centre begins its life ; this indeed 
occurs at a much earlier age, and this centre from the 
outset and continuously increases in complexity and 
stability. Nor was the statement made that there was 
no difference here relevant, between the loss of vision 
at different ages before the critical period. That a 
child who has seen up to the fourth, or the third, or even 
the second year of life, probably retains some traces 
of visualizing not attainable by those who attended 



370 FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY 

the school of vision for a shorter time or not at all, is 
believed on evidence of a general, but not as yet of a 
specific nature. Among other facts it is indicated by 
the influence of the age of blinding on the future 
development of noted blind persons. Similarly, after 
the critical period, the same processes of growth and 
assimilation continue, as is evidenced by the vague 
character and comparatively early decay of the dream- 
vision of those becoming blind close upon the end of 
the seventh year. The more time spent in gathering 
in the provisions, the longer do they hold out. The 
significance of the critical period lies in its demon- 
strating a point in the growth of the higher sense- 
centres, at which a divorce from sense-impression is 
no longer followed by a loss of their psychical mean- 
ing ; a point at which imagination and abstraction find 
a sufficiently extended and firmly knit collection of ex- 
periences to enable them to build up and keep alive 
their important functions ; a point where the scholar 
dispenses with the object-lesson and lives off his capital; 
a point at which the scaffolding may be torn down and 
the edifice will stand. 

The indication of such a period in the development 
of the human mind brings clearly into view the de- 
pendence of the higher mental processes upon the 
basis furnished them by the experiences of sensation ; 
it strongly suggests a rational order and proportion in 
the training of the several faculties of the child's 
mind ; and finally, it prevents the formation and sur- 
vival of false notions, by substituting certain definite 
though incomplete knowledge for much indefinite 
though very systematic speculation. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Alchemy, 18, 171; problems of, 19; 
modern forms of, 20; type of occult- 
ism represented by, 20. 

Analogy, as applied in pseudo-science, 
23, 43, 44, 267, 268 ; as a logical pro- 
cess, 237, 267, 272; the natural his- 
tory view of, 236 sqq., 271 ; as charac- 
teristic of primitive thought-habits, 
239, 241, 247 ; in children, 251 ; see also, 
Metaphor, Myth, Numbers, Supersti- 
tion, Sjrmbolism, Unusual. 

Animal Magnetism ; see Mesmer. 

Apperception, illustrated by diagrams, 
283-295. 

Astrology, 18, 171, 266-269 ; interest in, 
23 ; logic underlying, 23. 

Attention, misdirection of, 121, 124 ; ex- 
pectant, 294. 

Automatic writing, 333. 

Automatograph, §39. 

Beard, Dr. G. M., 229. 

Belief, fixation of, 40, 104, 105 ; occult, 
see Occult ; psychology of, 38, 60. 

Bernheim, , 230. 

Bertrand, , 201. 

Besant, Mrs., 10. 

Binet, , 157. 

Blavatsky, Mme., 7, 8, 9, 10. 

Blindness, 340 ; total, 341 ; partial, 343, 
344 ; in dream-life, 361-363, 367, 368 ; 
age of onset and dream-vision, 341- 
344, 369, 370 ; and the imagination, 
363, 364; and special sensibilities, 
365-367. 

Braid, James, 205 ; his early observa- 
tions, 206, 207 ; his historical posi- 
tion, 207, 208 ; his method, 207 ; his 
theories, 209, 211 ; his relation to 
phrenology, 209, 210 ; his later writ- 
ings, 211 ; detection of unconscious 
suggestion, 211, 212 ; his status, 213. 

Brand, , 241. 

Bridgman, Laura, 366 ; dreams of, 347- 
350. 

Census Office, 301. 

Charcot, J. M., 69,228, 338. 

Christian Science, 26, 44 ; origin of, 27 ; 
prmciples of, 27-30, 31, 32 ; text-book 
of, 28; extravagance of, 30, 31, 32; 
antagonism to science, 33. 

Clairvoyance, 14, 223, 226; see Puys6gur. 



Clocquet, , 214, 

Clodd, Edward, 241, 242, 244, 245, 248, 

265, 272. 
Coincidences, 81, 83, 88,90; and chance, 

84, 97. 
Color, association with sound, 366, 367. 
Conjuring ; see Deceptions, conjuring. 
Contagion, mental, 132-134. 

Darlingism, 224. 

Darwin, Erasmus, 346. 

Davey, ; see Hodgson and Davey. 

Deafness, in relation to dreams, 347. 

Deception, as dependent upon objective 
conditions, 109 ; as dependent upon 
habit. 111 ; love of. 111 ; historical a,s- 
pect of, 112 ; conjuring, 113, 114-117, 
120-128 ; as imitation of reality, 116- 
118 ; as dependent upon subjective 
conditions, 118, 120-128 ; and technical 
knowledge, 13, 128, 148 ; analysis of, 
129 ; as influenced by contagion, 132- 
134; liability to, 150; see also Illusion. 

Deleuze, J. P. F., 217. 

Deslon, 183, 184. 

Dickens, Charles, 350. 

Digby, Sir Kenebn, 261. 

Dorman, , 240, 246, 249. 

Drawings, equivocal, 286-295. 

Dreams, sensory factors in, 364, 365 ; of 
the blind ; see Blindness ; see Omens. 

Dupotet, , 202, 224. 

Dyer, , 256, 258, 264. 

Eccentric opinions, 2. 

Eddy, Mary Baker Glover, 27. 

Electro-biology, 219. 

Englinton, , 14& 

Esdaile, , 215. 

Faria, Abb6, 200 ; his use of suggestion, 

201. 
Folk-medicine, 260, 265. 
Fox, Margaret and Katie, 138. 

Frazer, , 254. 

Furness, Horace Howard, 142-144, 158, 

163. 

Galton, Francis, 338, 366, 
Gassner, Johann Joseph, 179, 180. 
Greaterick or Greatrakes, Valentine, 

176-178, 180. 
Gregory, William, 222. 



374 



INDEX 



Hall, G. Stanley, 347, 348. 
HaUucinations, 71. 

Hansen, , 229. 

Heermann, Dr. G., 342, 343. 
Hodgson, Richard, 8, 147, 150; and 
Davey, 129, 149, 151-157. 

Hollerith, , 301. 

Houdin, Robert, 121, 122. 

Husson, , 202. 

Hypnotism, 67, 171 ; history of, 172 sqq., 

203, 227, 231-235 ; before the Acade- 
mies, 202-205 ; extravagances of, 214, 
217-227 ; as applied to medicine, 202, 

204, 214 ; lessons of, 231-235. 
Hypothesis, its logical status, 100, 101. 

Illusion, 109, 110 ; optical, 282, 284 ; of 
ambiguous outlines, 286 sqq. ; see also 
Deception. 

Images, their use in magic, 244. 

Inertia, mental, 296, 297-300. 

Interest, as creating coincidences, 88- 
92 ; as influencing perception, 119 ; in 
Psychical Research, 56-58, 63, 65. 

Involuntary Movements, 307 ; illustra- 
tions of, 312-321 ; influence of bodHy 
position upon, 322-330 ; analysis of, 
322-330 ; varieties of, 334 ; effects of 
object of attention upon, 331-333 ; see 
also Subconscious. 

Involuntary whispering, 335, 336. 

James, William, 39, 41, 43. 

Kellar, Harry, 122, 140, 150. 

Keller, Helen, 366 ; her accoimt of her 

dream-life, 353-358 ; her mental traits, 

351, 352, 359, 360. 
Kitto, John, 363, 366. 
Knerr, Dr., 141, 142, 145. 

Lang, Andrew, 14, 21, 66, 166, 176. 

Le Bon, , 134. 

Lewis, Prof. Carvill, 146. 

Liebault, A. A., 216. 

Logic, as applied to the occult, 3, 13, 19, 
23, 30, 31, 39; logicality and ration- 
ality, 45. 

Lubbock, Sir J., 242, 252. 

Magic, 242, 257, 265 ; sympathetic, 240, 
241, 246, 254, 261-263, 273; corre- 
spondences in, 266 ; see also Images, 
Names, Numbers. 

Mahatma, 8, 10. 

Martineau, Harriet, 221, 222. 

McCosh, Dr., 346. 

Medicine ; see Folk-medicine; see also 
Superstition. 

Mental Community, 80-83. 

Mental Telegraphy ; see Telepathy. 

Mesmer, Friedrich Anton, 14, 25, 36, 
43, 180 ; his theories, 181, 189 ; his 
practices, 181, 190, 191 ; his Parisian 
career, 182-189 ; the commission to 
examine, 185-187, 192, 193 ; his atti- 
tude, 187 ; caricatures of, 188 ; his 
status in regard to Hypnotism, 191,192. 



Metaphor, in relation to analogy, 248, 

264,270. - 
Mind, its influence over body, 26, 37, 38; 

mortal, 28, 29. 
Mind-reading ; see Muscle-reading. 
Miracles ; see Supernatural. 
Muscle-reading, 308, 324. 
Myth, in relation to analogy, 270. 

Names, their use in Magic, 243-245, 257= 
Nancy, School of, 230. 
Numbers, in Magic, 258 ; in relation to 
analogy, 259. 

Observation, defects of, 87, 153-155. 

Occult, nature of, 3; motives that in- 
cline to the, 4, 39, 40, 43 ; conditions 
that favor the, 5, 57 ; persistence of, 
46 ; antidote to the, 46. 

Occult Healing, 25, 26, 33, 34 ; varieties 
of, 34, 35 ; by absent treatment, 36 ; 
extravagances of, 35, 37. 

Od, 225. 

Omens, 243, 253 ; by contraries, 250 ; in 
dreams, 255-257. 

Oudet, Dr. , 204, 215. 

Palmistry, 18 ; interest in, 23 ; logic un- 
derlying, 23. 

Perception, 106, 108, 110 ; as determined 
by interest, 119 ; and expectation, 120. 

Personal interpretation of events, 17, 40- 
42, 56, 84. 

P(§tetin, , 197, 198 ; his transposi- 
tion of the senses, 199. 

Phrenology, 18, 171 ; interest in, 23 ; 
logic underlying, 23. 

Physiognomy, 18. 

Podmore, Frank , 10, 162, 164, 167. 

Prepossession, 44, 120, 126, 127, 130, 131, 
151, 162-166, 296, 297-300 ; a note- 
worthy illustration of, 301-304. 

Pseudo-science, 5, 20, 21, 24 ; temper of, 
22 ; practical aspect of, 18, 21, 25 ; va- 
rieties of, 35. 

Psychical Research, the programme of, 
50 ; the trend of, 51, 62, 75-77 ; inter- 
ests contributing to, 56-58, 63, 65, 66 ; 
the problems of, 67; relation to Psy- 
chology, see Psychology. 

Psychology, scope of, 51 ; relation to 
Psychical Research, 52-56, 58-61, 64, 
65, 76 ; difficulties in teaching, 298. 

Puys^gur, Marquis A. M. J. Chastenet 
de, 194 ; his discovery of somnambul- 
ism, 194, 195 ; this views and status, 
196, 197. 

Quackery, 25. 

Reichenbach, Baron, 225. 
Rydberg, , 266, 267. " 

Salpgtriere, 202, 228, 231. 

Scherer, , 366. 

Science, the spirit of, 48 ; the nature of, 

49 ; and error of, 69. 
Sensation, and perception, 106, 107. 



INDEX 



375 



Seybert Commission, 140, 141, 158. 

Sidgwick, Mrs., 141, 157. 

Sight ; see Vision. 

Signatures, doctrine of, 264. 

Siunett, A. P., 10, 11. 

Slade, Henry, 139, 140, 141. 

Somnambulism, artificial, 197, 198. 

Spiritualism, 12, 27, 44,125; manifesta- 
tions of, 13, 128, 131 ; origin of, 14, 
15, 137, 166, 167 ; doctrines of, 15, 161, 
165 ; present status of, 16, 18, 169 ; 
fraud disclosed in, 140, 141, 142-145, 
146, 157, 159. 

Spiritualists, temper of, 16, 17. 

Statistics, in relation to mental pro- 
blems, 84-86. 

Subconscious, 70, 79, 92, 108, 128, 129, 
308. 

Fuggestion, 230 ; unconscious, 68, 174, 
186, 199, 211, 233. 

Sully, James, 111, 345. 

Supernatural, divergence between re- 
port and fact, 153, 155, 158 ; conflict 
with science, 174. 

Superstition, 252, 254, 258 ; in relation 
to analogy, 253 ; in medicine, 259. 

Survivals, 240, 248, 269, 274. 

Symbolism, in relation to analogy, 248, 
249, 270. 

Sympathy; see Magic, sympathetic. 



Telepathy, 72, 73, 78 ; logical status of, 
74 ; evidence for, 96-98, 103 ; validity as 
an hypothesis, 99 ; inclination toward, 
104. 

Theosophy, 7, 27 ; Mr. Hodgson's inves- 
tigation of, 8, 9 ; alleged miracles of, 
9, 10; doctrines of, 11, 12. 

Thought-habits, in children and savages, 
251, 271, 272. 

Triplett, Norman, 117, 123. 

Tylor, , 167, 240, 242, 250, 253, 256, 

267, 270, 273. 

TyndaU, , 135. 

Unconsciousness of defects, 7&, 80 ; see 

also Subconscious. 
Unknown, attitude toward the, 49. 
Unusual, in relation to analogy, 250, 

260. 

Vision, its nature, 276, 337 ; subjective 
and objective, 276 ; subjective factor 
in, 277, 279, 280, 283, 288-295 ; inter- 
pretation in, 285, 286-295 ; educa- 
tion of the visual centre, 341, 345- 
347, 369, 370 ; its function in dreams, 
339. 

Visualizing power, 338. 

ZoUner, , 139. 






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